Talk:Ellen Swallow Richards

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A fact from Ellen Swallow Richards appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 September 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the word ecology was coined by Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/September.

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 September 2018 and 22 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Allanstein4.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:27, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Naming convention used

I know it is preferred to use last name reference, however, it became confusing with all the different Swallows and Richardses, using Ellen (Nellie) for the youth stage, Miss Swallow for the young adult stage, and Mrs. Richards for the married clears up that confusion. This was the convention employed in the most oft quoted biography by Miss Hunt.76.180.38.195 (talk) 17:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

I've always heard that Ernst Haeckel first coined the word, "ecology", as the Wikipedia entry for ecology indicates. Did Ellen Swallow Richards actually coin the first anglicized version of this word?

Hmm - OED mentions Haeckel's 1873 reference to "Oecology", doesn't cite Richards. More research needed. Stan 05:20, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Mrs. Richards "introduced" the anglicized version "oekology" (German: "ökologie".) to the United States just before the turn of the century, 1892, I believe, always giving full credit to Ernst. This led her to coin the term euthenics, which eventually evolved into what is now "home economics." Many sources do claim she "coined the term." 76.180.38.195 (talk) 13:10, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Revert

I reverted the page back to an earlier version to remove edits by user 209.244.187.213 that appeared over a 2-minute periond on 11 March 2007. The edits of that user may have been good (I didn't read them), but they resulted in the loss of the page's organization and even one section. Maybe someone can look at this? -- Astrochemist 13:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Photo Caption

Somehow the caption on the photo implied that Hunt's book was published in 1879. I corrected that to 1912 per the bibliographic citation at the end of the article. Don't know where the 1879 date came from--it's almost certainly not the date of the photo itself, since Richards was just 37 years old at that time and the photo appears to show a much older woman. 206.208.105.129 (talk) 15:08, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great article

This is a great article about a great person who ought to be better known. I found this article because someone just linked this biography from template:Consumerism, and this person does seem like someone who should be a part of the history of the Consumer movement. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:31, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Reading the sadly terse article about euthenics led me this biography, which was poorly treated, as well, and I felt inspired by her life story to help clean up both articles. Just a couple of more highlights to insert, and it will finally be thorough. I hope I have done them objective justice, though I am strongly inspired by the whole subject.76.180.38.195 (talk) 17:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Copyediting needed

I just spent over an hour cleaning up some stilted writing and bizarre formatting in the article, and more work is still needed. The entire article seems to be a patchwork cobbled together from assorted pieces, and needs an extensive rewrite for better cohesion and less duplication. Reify-tech (talk) 02:52, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OMG yes. I went through a number of sections and tried to make them more factual. There is alot that can be cut (I'm surprised we don't have a section on her favorite foods and the color of ribbon that went best with her eyes.) If these edits look ok, I'll find time to complete the work. Just wanted to see if anyone disagrees with the tone I'm aiming for. I only got as far as the Vassar College section, and in fact the various education sections could be merged into one single section with just a few sentences each. Should the article be radically reduced in this way? LaMona (talk) 17:46, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've done some more editing, and found two books on women in science that actually have better info on her scientific accomplishments, which are hidden here in all of the flourishes about her life. I'll try to get that worked in, and reduce down the number of headings. I'm thinking that after "College" there can be "Professional career" and the "Scientific work". That should cover the main text. LaMona (talk) 01:26, 9 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is it true that most of this article was copied from elsewhere?

I may of course be wrong, but I strongly suspect that most of this article -- the parts not in quotes -- was copied from elsewhere. IF SO, the copied portions of the article should be clearly identified, and their source or sources used should be clearly referenced.

Why do I believe this? Because the language used throughout the article is not at all typical of the way that people use English today, but rather entirely typical of the way people spoke it 100 year ago.Daqu (talk) 23:31, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The best way to find out would be to go through the references and see if there are sections copied verbatim. But it's also possible that the author paraphrased what was found there, using the same language style. Meanwhile, the "glowing" aspects of the language ("foremost .. of her time") need to be edited. I'll try to get to that. LaMona (talk) 17:21, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In fiction

Ellen (Nellie) Swallow figures as a main character in the novel The Technologists by Matthew Pearl. I don't know if any-one wants to include this in the article, but often use of subjects in lit, song, film is mentioned in Wik articles.22:48, 17 June 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.53.191.77 (talk)

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External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Ellen Swallow Richards. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

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Ecofeminism

Hi User:Sam Spade: according to the "who wrote that?" tool, you wrote the part of this article that says "Richards was a pragmatic feminist, as well as a founding ecofeminist...[8]". I am working on the article "Ecoféminisme" in French and wondering what the exact links were between Richards and ecofeminism, as the present article does not elaborate on the subject beyond this sentence in the introduction (and I don't have access to the cited source). I wonder if that might be a confusion between "eco" as in "ecology" and "eco" as in "economy"? Thanks in advance for any detail you can provide :) --Opsylac (talk) 11:32, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]