Woman of the Week – Rachel Lloyd

Rachel Lloyd was an American chemist best known for her work on the chemistry and farming of sugar beets. She was also the first American woman to earn a doctoral degree in chemistry when she graduated from the University of Zurich in 1887.

She was born Rachel Holloway in Flushing, Ohio to a large Quaker family. Sadly, she spent most of her life without them, as her siblings all died in infancy, her mother died when she was five and her father died when she was 12.

At 20, she met and married Franklin Lloyd, a chemist with Powers and Weightman. The couple had two children who died in infancy. But her losses didn’t end there. Her husband died in 1865.

For a few years after his death, she supported help working as a science teacher and later made the formal decision to pursue chemistry. In 1876, she started taking botany courses at the Harvard Summer School. She studied there for eight years and met many colleagues she would work with later in her career. She went on to the University of Zurich where she earned her Ph.D. and began her work into the research of sugar beets.

In 1884, she was offered an appointment as associate professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Nebraska. While there, she encouraged students to enroll in the new chemistry department and she was able to grow the department. Specifically, she was able to increase female student enrollment: between 1888 and 1915, 10 of the 46 students were female.

She continued her sugar beet research in addition to her teaching duties. As part of an experiment, she wanted to determine if the beets could grow in a northern climate. She analyzed them to improve the quality of seeds that farmers in Nebraska could get. Her work helped create a booming sugar beet industry in Nebraska, which was crucial to the economic success of the region.

The state was able to acquire a grant to help grow the industry even further and create the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station after the passage of the Hatch Act in 1887. This act gave federal funds to create new agricultural experiments.

She rose to be a full professor at the university in 1888 and taught until 1894, when she had to resign due to her failing health. In 1891, she was the first regularly admitted women to the American Chemical Society.

She lived in Philadelphia for the last seven years of her life near friends and relatives. She died in 1900.

Sugar beets remain a crucial part of Nebraska’s economy to this day.