Ellen Swallow Richards

Ellen Swallow Richards was an American chemist and engineer regarded as a founder of the field of sanitary and environmental engineering. The first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she conducted a landmark survey of Massachusetts water quality in the 1880s that mapped pollution across the state's rivers and led to the country's first state water-quality standards, and she helped establish MIT's sanitary chemistry laboratory to train engineers in analyzing water and sewage. She also founded the home economics movement, applying engineering and chemistry to domestic environments, and helped found the American Association of University Women.