The William Barton Rogers Building - The Door Opens

As Ellen Swallow stepped onto the MIT campus for the first time, she encountered a college and city poised for rapid growth. From 1870 to 1910, MIT’s enrollment would increase from 224 to 1508 students, and Boston's population more than double. The Boston Back Bay reverberated with the constant chorus of earth-moving equipment creating the land MIT occupied then and occupies now. Today, nothing remains of MIT’s original campus, its footprints buried beneath more modern structures.

Ellen attended classes at 501 Boylston Street, later known as the Roger’s Building, where MIT housed state-of-the-art teaching laboratories, classrooms, and a large lecture hall. As a measure of MIT’s growing reputation, the 1871 Illustrated Map of Boston features MIT and its neighbor, the Boston Society of Natural History Museum, with famous landmarks such as the Massachusetts State House, Quincy Market, and Old South Church. 

From the start, President John D. Runkle believed in Ellen and supported admitting women to MIT, “I congratulate you and every earnest woman upon the result … I will say now that you shall have any and all advantages which the Institute has to offer without charge of any kind.” 

Ellen expressed her enthusiasm in a letter to a friend: “You will know that one of my delights is to do something that no one else ever did. I have the chance of doing what no woman ever did … To be the first woman to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and so far as I know, any scientific school, and to do it by myself alone, unaided, to be welcomed most cordially, is this not honor enough for the first six months of postcollegiate life?" 

Recognizing the potential challenges of being the only female student at MIT, President Runkle introduced Ellen to the only woman at MIT, Margaret Stinson, who managed the Chemistry Laboratory supplies. The “first women of MIT” would become lifelong friends.

As Ellen’s first day at MIT drew to a close, “[President Runkle] inquired of Mrs. Stinson how the young woman was getting on. ‘She looks rather frail to take such a difficult course,’ Mrs. Stinson said. ‘But did you notice her eyes?’ was his reply. ‘They are steadfast and they are courageous. She will not fail.’"⁴

Ellen did not fail. While earning an ScB in Chemistry from MIT, she also completed a Master’s Degree from Vassar.⁴ MIT never offered Ellen the opportunity to pursue an advanced degree at MIT. Her husband, Professor Robert H. Richards (1868), theorized that MIT was unwilling to grant a woman the first advanced degree in Chemistry. No woman would earn a Master’s or Doctorate Degree in Chemistry from MIT until 1922.²

In 1910, Smith College awarded Ellen an Honorary Doctorate in Science: "Ellen Henrietta Richards, Bachelor and Master of Arts of Vassar College, Bachelor of Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and there for over a quarter of a century instructor in Sanitary Chemistry. By investigations into the explosive properties of oils and in the analysis of water, and by expert knowledge relating to air, food, water, sanitation, and the cost of food and shelter, set forth in numerous publications and addresses, she has largely contributed to promote in the community the serviceable arts of safe, healthful, and economic living."^3,4

1. Acts and Resolves of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1861, Chapter 183, Section 3. https://wayback.archive-it.org/7963/20190702083533/https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/pdf/1861%20Charter.pdf. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
2. Bever, Marilynn Arsey, The women of M.I.T., 1871-1941: who they were, what they achieved. 1976, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, SB Department of Humanities thesis. DSpace@MIT, http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33804. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
3. Honorary Degrees | Smith College. Smith College, https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/smith-history/honorary-degrees. Accessed 6 Sept. 2022.
4. Hunt, Caroline Louisa, 1865-1927. The Life of Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows, 1912, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t3513ww21. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
5. Letter, William Barton Rogers to Henry Darwin Rogers, March 13, 1846, William Barton Rogers Papers (MC 1), Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
6. Munroe, J. Phinney. (1904). William Barton Rogers: founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boston: Geo. H. Ellis. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hc2uk2. Accessed 08 August 2022.
7. Reports of the President, Secretary, and Departments, 1871-1872, MIT Libraries | Dome Home, 1872, https://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/62033. Accessed 12 Mar. 2022
8. Reports of the President and Treasurer. MIT Libraries | Dome Home, 1911, http://hdl.handle.net/1721.3/58994. Accessed 18 Aug. 2022
9. Rogers, William Barton. Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology, 2nd Edition. Boston, 1861. MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections: The Founding of MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries Department of Distinctive Collections, 2011, https://wayback.archive-it.org/7963/20190701220810/https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/pdf/objects-plan.pdf. Accessed March 11, 2022.
10. U.S. Census Bureau. 1870 Census: Vol. I. The statistics of the population of the United States. Retrieved from https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1870/population/1870a-58.pdf. Accessed Aug. 18, 2022.
11. U.S. Census Bureau (1913). 1910 Abstract – Supplement for Massachusetts. Retrieved from https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1910/abstract/supplement-ma.pdf. Accessed Aug. 18, 2022.