It seems like a no-brainer that workplaces should be safe. Yet a century ago workers were regularly sickened by on-the-job exposure to harmful substances. Alice Hamilton, a chemist and physician, identified many workplace hazards. She also led the charge for laws that protect employees from dangerous substances and promoted "industrial medicine," which strove for health and safety within industrial workplaces.

In 1919 Hamilton joined the faculty of the Harvard Medical School—at that time she was the only woman faculty member in the entire university.

About Her Life

Alice Hamilton (1869–1970) was one of four daughters and a son born to one of the founding families of Fort Wayne, Indiana. After attending a girls' boarding school that gave scant attention to science, she spent a summer being tutored in chemistry and physics before entering the University of Michigan Medical School. At Michigan she became fascinated with the subject of pathology and decided to become a research scientist rather than enter clinical practice, though she did complete her medical training. She returned briefly to the University of Michigan for graduate studies before setting out for Germany to pursue work in the field of bacteriology. Unlike her male counterparts, she was not very welcome in the German universities. She was refused the opportunity of studying in Berlin, experienced prejudice in Leipzig and Munich, but was warmly received in Frankfurt. Upon her return to the United States, Hamilton became a research assistant at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

In 1897 Hamilton accepted an appointment as professor of pathology at the Women's Medical School of Northwestern University. She later worked as a bacteriologist at Chicago 's Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases. In Chicago she lived at Hull House, the most famous of the settlement houses founded by churches and universities at the dawn of the 20th century to help immigrants and other poor people. While at Hull House, Hamilton applied her medical expertise to finding the causes for the high incidence of typhoid fever and tuberculosis in the surrounding community. In the tuberculosis study she identified bad working conditions as one of the factors that weakened the resistance of poor immigrants to the disease.

In 1908 she was appointed to the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases. The commission decided to conduct a broad survey of industrially related diseases in Illinois—a groundbreaking study, which Hamilton agreed to oversee. From 1911 to 1920 she served as a special investigator for the federal Bureau of Labor, where she did a landmark study of the manufacture of white lead and lead oxide, substances that were then commonly used as paint pigments, and she made recommendations for safer working conditions. Among her other famous studies was her work investigating the poisonous effects of manufacturing explosives on workers, a study undertaken during World War I—a war she opposed on pacifist grounds.

In 1919, as the leading expert in the field of industrial medicine, Hamilton was appointed assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, the first woman professor in any field in the entire university. Over the years Hamilton played a prominent role in turning the attention of government and industry to dangerous substances in the workplace.

Throughout her long life—she lived to 101—Hamilton maintained an active concern for international affairs and individual civil liberties. Because of the threat to humanity posed by the Nazis, she supported the entry of the United States into World War II—in contrast to her stance on World War I. Because she often publicly supported the right of people to hold and express unpopular views, she attracted the suspicion of authorities, and her activities were followed by the FBI, even when she was in her 90s.

For Further Reading on the Web

Alice Hamilton — from Chemical Achievers: The Human Face of the Chemical Sciences, a Chemical Heritage Foundation Web site.

Public Health Pioneer — from the Harvard Gazette, 23 October 1997.