Alice Evans (1881-1975) was a pioneering scientist who established that humans contract the once-common, painful disease brucellosis from raw cow and goat milk. She lobbied successfully for the pasteurization of all milk and lived to see the disease fall into obscurity.

For years, her findings were scorned and ignored because of her gender and because she did not have a doctorate degree. Evans contracted brucellosis while doing research, and suffered from the disease for 30 years. Brucellosis, a recurrent disease also known as Malta or undulant fever, causes shooting pain in the joints, fever, and depression.

Science Prodigy

Alice Evans was born January 29, 1881, to William Howell and Anne B. Evans in rural Neath, a northern Pennsylvania town to which her grandparents had immigrated from Wales in 1831. She attended local elementary schools with her brother, Morgan, and graduated in a class of seven from the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute of Towanda...