Born Ellen Henrietta Swallow in Dunstable, Massachusetts, she would be the first woman to earn a science degree in America. It would take her twenty six years to be admitted to Vassar, and two to finish. Admitted to MIT as "an experiment" she would discover Samarskite (a rare ore) and isolate the element Vanadium.

She earned an international reputation studying pollutants in water, and founded the study of ecology. Then applying scientific principles to domestic life, she began a testing laboratory which established the study of "home economics" or as she preferred to call it, "human ecology".

She accurately described two future crises, air pollution and the energy crisis. Shortly before her death she spoke at MIT's convocation and advised: The quality of life depends on the ability of society to teach its members how to live in harmony with their environment - defined first as the family, then with the community, then with the world and its resources.