Her duty, as she conceived it, is well indicated in the following paragraph, taken from a thoughtful discussion by her of the subject of home economics a short time before her death in 1911. "The sanitary research worker in laboratory and field," she declares, "has gone nearly to the limit of his value. He will soon be smothered in his own work, if no one takes it. Meanwhile children die by the thousands; contagious diseases take toll of hundreds; back alleys remain foul and the streets are unswept; school-houses are unwashed and danger lurks in the drinking cups and about the towels. Dust is stirred up each morning with the feather duster to greet the warm, moist noses and throats of the children. To the watchful expert it seems like the old cities dancing and making merry on the eve of a volcanic outbreak."[159] From the day in 1873 when Mrs. Richards received from the Institute of Technology the degree of Bachelor of Science--a degree which made her not only the first woman graduate of this institution, but also the first graduate in the United States of a strictly scientific seat of learning--the number of women who have devoted themselves to chemical pursuits is legion. They are now found in every civilized country in both hemispheres and their number is daily increasing. They are everywhere doing excellent work as teachers in classrooms and laboratories and holding their own with men as chemical experts in manufacturing establishments and government institutions. Many of them have done original work of a high order, and distinguished themselves by their valuable contributions to contemporary chemical literature. Space, however, precludes more than a general reference to their achievements, for the names only of those who have done meritorious work in chemistry would make a very long list. Passing over, then, all the lesser feminine lights in chemistry who, in various fields of activity, have rendered such distinct service during the past generation, we come to one who for nearly two decades has stood in the forefront of the great chemists of the world. This is that renowned daughter of Poland, Mme. Marie Klodowska Curie, whose name will always be identified with some of the most remarkable discoveries which have ever been made in the long-continued study of the material universe.