Helen Abbott Michael (American Philosophical Society, 1887) was an American chemist who documented the relationship between the chemical composition and the physical structure of plants. A pioneer in analyzing the chemicals in plants, she transformed the field of plant biology in 1887 with her model of plant chemical evolution.
Helen Cecilia de Silver Abbott was born in Philadelphia on December 23, 1857 to James Abbott and Caroline Montelius. As an adult, she had interests in art, literature, philosophy, and music and later wrote poetry and literary criticism. She received her early education from private tutors and also studied piano in Paris during a trip to Europe. One of her European music instructors said, “She had a superior mind open to everything.” Her early tutors did not encourage scientific studies, but during one of her trips to Europe, in 1881, Helen read Hermann von Helmholtz's Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, which promoted her interest in science. This interest expanded to include anatomy, medicine, and zoology. She entered Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in fall 1882, but did not graduate for health reasons. But, during her recovery, she still passed her second year final examinations in chemistry, anatomy and physiology. Before Helen had to withdraw from medical school, a child in her care died after eating the roots of a flower; and as her recovery continued, she began to investigate the diversity of chemical compounds found in plants.
After working as a chemical laboratory assistant for two years, Helen approached Samuel Philip Sadtler (APS, 1874) of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy Laboratory to ask for his assistance in finding facilities for her study of plant chemistry. He introduced her to Professor Henry Trimble (APS, 1897) who had studied plant analysis and who took Helen on as a private student. She conducted research with Professor Sadtler and Professor Trimble from 1884 to 1888, and produced meticulously researched original papers on plant chemistry, including works on some Mexican and Central American plants. In 1887, she transformed the field of plant biology by publishing “Comparative Chemistry of Higher and Lower Plants” in the American Naturalist.
Studies of chemistry and evolution were just beginning in the 1880s and it would be many years before researchers understood the full implications of her conclusion that chemical diversity in plants was the result of evolution. Her research so impressed the college’s trustees that they agreed she should be the first woman in the school’s history to lecture students. She also presented her research to many learned societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the United States National Museum.
Helen returned to Europe in 1887 to tour scientific institutions with the hope of being accepted as a student, but had no success. She did learn, however, that Professor Arthur Michael, of Tufts College, Massachusetts, currently was the most advanced student in synthetic organic chemistry, as applied to plant substances. She returned to the United States and moved to Boston, where she worked in the laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Michael, whom she married in June 1888. They moved several times during the next few years, following Profesor Michael’s career appointments; during this time Helen published four more papers on plant chemistry. They returned to Boston in 1895 and Professor Michael resumed his connection with Tufts College. Now Helen began to study the stereochemistry of sugar molecules. She conducted research on glucosides and their role throughout a plant’s development; she continued to develop her theory that plant evolution could be traced through plant chemistry. She also predicted, in a lecture on “Plant Analysis as an Applied Science,” that future chemists would be able to produce proteins, sugars, and starches needed in the human diet through synthetic means.
Helen Michael received many honors throughout her life. In addition to her election to the American Philosophical Society, she was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, and of the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft of Berlin.
She had made enormous contributions to science up to that point in her life, but guided by an emerging interest in social work in Boston, she began to focus all her knowledge and efforts on her renewed ambition to become a doctor. In 1900, eighteen years after her first experience in medical school, she entered Tufts University School of Medicine and received her medical degree in 1903. She established a free hospital for the poor in a private house in Boston and practiced medicine there together with another woman physician. Sadly, she died the following year when she contracted influenza from one of her patients. She was 46.
Sources:
Bailey, Martha S. American women in science; a biographical dictionary. Denver: ABC-CLIO, 1994.
Michael, Helen Abbott. Studies in plant and organic chemistry and literary papers with biographical sketch. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1907.
Sadtler, Samuel P. “Helen Abott Michael.” American Journal of Pharmacy. Philadelphia, 1905.