The American physician Alice Hamilton (1869-1970) is recognized as the founder of industrial medicine in the United States. She was the first woman on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

Alice Hamilton grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in an affluent home. Her parents entertained guests who discussed major topics of the day, and they stimulated the thinking of their children by raising doubts about society's religious and social assumptions. Hamilton attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and in 1893 graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School. She interned in the New England Hospital for Women in Boston. There she serviced working-class people, the usual clientele of the first women doctors (who were seldom employed by the upper classes).

In 1894 Dr. Hamilton studied bacteriology in Germany and returned to accept her first teaching position at the Women's Medical College of Northwestern University in Chicago, Ill. Another important...