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Ellen Swallow Richards (December 3, 1842 — March 30, 1911) was an industrial and environmental chemist and home economist. Having been born to a Dunstable, Massachusetts, family of modest means, Ellen Swallow struggled and saved her money to enter Vassar College in 1868. Her parents, Fanny Taylor and Peter Swallow, taught her to value education.
After failing to find suitable employment on graduation, she was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She remained associated with MIT after graduation, helping to create programs for female students. In 1875 she married Robert H. Richards, a professor in the Mine Engineering Department. Subsequently, she became an instructor in the newly founded laboratory in sanitary chemistry. Her interests broadened to applying her chemistry knowledge to sanitary and domestic situations. Her interest in the environment led her in 1892 to introduce into English the word ecology which had been coined in German literature to describe the "household of nature".
Richards was the first female admitted to MIT and its first female instructor. She was also the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.
She died at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1911.
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