Alice Hamilton (2) (1869–1970)

Alice Hamilton was born in New York City and raised on the family estate in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She earned a medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School, and completed internships at the Minneapolis Hospital for Women and Children and the New England Hospital for Women and Children. With her older sister Edith Hamilton, she traveled to Germany in 1895 to study bacteriology and pathology at the universities of Leipzig and Munich. On her return to the USA, she continued her postgraduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Her biographer Barbara Sicherman says, "Alice Hamilton belonged to the extraordinary generation of women who pioneered in the professions and social reform." In 1897, she moved to Chicago, where she became a professor of Pathology at the Woman's Medical School of Northwestern University and a resident of Hull House (with her sister Norah Hamilton). She did research on typhoid in the surrounding community and became increasingly interested in the occupational injuries and illnesses faced by workers. In 1908, she published her first article on the topic and was appointed by the governor of Illinois to the newly-formed Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, the first such body in the USA. Over the next decade she investigated a range of occupational hazards, and became a pioneer in occupational epidemiology and industrial hygiene. Her findings led to sweeping health reforms and changes in laws and practice to improve the health of workers. She was also active in the women's rights and peace movements. In 1919, she was hired as assistant professor in the new Department of Industrial Medicine at Harvard Medical School, becoming the first woman appointed to the Harvard faculty in any field. In 1925, she published the first American textbook on the subject of Industrial Hygiene in the USA, followed by the textbook Industrial Toxicology (1934). Her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades, was published in 1943.