Born: 29 January 1881, United States
Died: 5 September 1975
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
When Alice Catherine Evans joined the Bureau of Animal Industry in 1913, it was not the most welcoming environment. She later wrote in her memoir, “Although several women scientists were employed in the Bureau of Plant Industry, USDA, only one had preceded me in the Bureau of Animal Industry. She remained only a year or two, in the Division of Pathology, and left before I came. I wonder how she came to be admitted. In my case, admission was by accident, for the BAI officials had failed inadvertently to protect themselves against the admittance of women. They had left a loophole in the barrier, and I had entered through it unwittingly… when the bad news broke at a meeting of BAI officials that a woman scientist would be coming to join their staff, they were filled with consternation. In the words of a stenographer who was present, they almost fell off their chairs.”
While working in the Dairy Division, Evans began investigating the bacteria Bacillus abortus, which was known to cause miscarriages in animals. She believed that the bacterium caused brucellosis, a potentially fatal disease that presents with fever, joint, and muscle pain and could be transmitted to humans via unpasteurised milk. She reported her findings to the Society of American Bacteriologists in 1917, publishing the results in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in 1918 and warning that raw milk should be pasteurised, as the process kills most bacteria. As a woman, and one without a PhD, her warnings were generally disregarded by sceptics. Although her observations were repeatedly confirmed, first by Dr. Karl F. Meyer and his team in 1920, it wasn’t until the 1930s that pasteurisation became standard practice in the U.S. It’s impossible to calculate how many people and animals were affected, as even Evans herself was misdiagnosed with neurasthenia when she was infected because doctors did not recognise the signs of brucellosis.
Joining the U.S. Public Health Service’s Hygienic Laboratory in 1918, Evans studied epidemic meningitis, Spanish flu and streptococcus. She published research on the nascent stage of bacteriophage more than two decades before Winston R. Maxted and Richard M. Krause published similar findings. In 1928, the Society of American Bacteriologists elected Evans their first woman president in recognition of her work.