Ellen Swallow Richards was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and was a daughter of Peter and Fanny Swallow, who were school-teachers and part-time farmers. Ellen Swallow obtained a Baccalaureate (the equivalent of an undergraduate degree) from Vassar Female College, and in 1870 she became the first woman to be accepted as a student by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). Founded in Boston in 1865, MIT had rapidly become a highly regarded school of engineering and applied science. In 1873, she graduated as a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and in the same year received a Master of Arts degree from Vassar, based on a thesis involving examination of the vanadium content of an iron ore.

Ellen Swallow then spent several years studying towards a doctorate at MIT, but did not graduate, apparently because the faculty members of...