Monologue Report: Ellen Swallow Richards

1785 Words4 Pages

Monologue Report: Ellen Swallow Richards

In many ways, Ellen Swallow Richards was the first in what she did. The first woman admitted to MIT, the first to conduct product consumer tests, the first to create water purity standards, and the founder of oekology. She had a educational upbringing, a soaring peak in her career, and a passion for science even as her health started to decline. She had a very inspiring, incredible life.

Ellen Swallow’s influential life started on December 3, 1842, on a farm a bit outside of Dunstable, Massachusetts. Both of her parents believed strongly in education, so she was raised learning history and logic from her father, and numbers and letters from her mother. Both taught her mathematics and literature. She was an unusually bright child, and by the time she was 17 her family moved to Westford to get her a better education. She worked in her father’s general store, and after proving her skills at school, she was asked to tutor other students. After school, she worked more and more at her father’s store, and pretty much ran it by herself. In 1863, her family moved once more to Littleton. Ellen was 22, and had a job teaching young pupils. At home and outside of school, she helped her ever-sick mother and worked as a maid for …show more content…

One of them was when she gave the same lesson on minerals to a group of elementary school children as she did to Harvard Graduates. The results were astounding. The children completed it faster and with better results than the college educated adults, because they trusted their own judgement more. She also, while in the middle of an earthquake, picked up a pen and started writing how far the picture flew from the wall, which way the lamp fell, how many pieces the mirror broke into, and so on. She then sealed the findings up and sent them to “A leading authority on seismic disturbances.” She kept working until the time of her

Open Document