The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards: Pioneer in Science and Technology

Chapter 7

She Will Not Fail

“I have tried several doors and they won’t open. I am not discouraged or blue at all I’ve full faith that the right thing will come in time … I often feel as if I must have something good in store for me.”

~ Ellen Swallow, October 8, 1870

Ellen and her carefully packed trunk were practically out the door and on their way to the teaching adventure in South America when news reached her that a civil war had broken out in Argentina and the Argentinean president had been overthrown. The contracts made with American teachers had to be cancelled.

“Hired and fired before I started.” She could barely believe what had happened.

Disappointed, Ellen unpacked and decided she’d better come up with a new plan. She wanted a career teaching science, but at the same time she wanted to practice applied science and be useful in helping to solve society’s problems. Could she find any place in this “men only” field? Who would hire a woman scientist? She’d have to find out.

Peter Swallow once told his six-year-old daughter, “Where anyone else has been, there I can go.” As a young woman, Ellen’s answer to her father was, “What others have done, that I can do is not a bad working motto. Adventurous spirits go beyond this and do what has never been done before.”

Trying to suppress her “inward disquiet” while working out in her mind how to proceed, she threw herself into a work frenzy. To help her parents, she scoured the house, whitewashed the basement, sorted, mended, washed ...