Anna Harrison will be remembered by her colleagues as a clear, strong voice for chemical education and as our first woman president, a person who demonstrated that leadership and dedication recognize no gender.”

Anna Jane Harrison was born on her family’s farm in Benton City, Missouri, in 1912. Her love of science would carry her from a one-room schoolhouse in Audrain County and high school in Mexico, Missouri, to a Ph.D. at the University of Missouri —Columbia and an amazing career as both scientist and teacher.

Harrison graduated from the University of Missouri with majors in chemistry, 1933 and education in 1935. During her Master’s in Chemistry, she took a job teaching back at the same one-room schoolhouse where her fascination with science had first been sparked.

After receiving a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1940 from Mizzou, Harrison was hired at Sophie Newcomb College in Louisiana, the women’s partner to Tulane University. While on a break from teaching, she conducted secret wartime research at Mizzou and continued her research work with the National Defense Research Committee through 1944. In 1945, Harrison was offered a position to work with the renowned Dr. Emma Perry Carr. Excited by this opportunity, she moved to Massachusetts to teach at Mount Holyoke College. Harrison’s research focused on using ultraviolet light to explore molecular structures and how molecules break apart and reassemble during reactions to create new molecules.

While her research was insightful, Harrison was perhaps even more highly regarded as a teacher with a reputation for being straightforward and bringing a sense of humor to the classroom. Her passion for helping people understand science and how it affects the world around us led to her serving in advisory groups, including the National Science Board—which advises Congress and the president regarding science policy, The Education Commission of the United States, and others. 

Her work as an educator and board member took her worldwide, including Antarctica, and in 1978 she was elected the first female president of the American Chemical Society.

Although Harrison officially retired from Mount Holyoke in 1979, she carried on her lifelong role as an educator, taking a position in the U.S. Naval Academy. She continued to write for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, among others, and in 1989, still going strong, she co-authored a chemistry textbook.

Harrison passed away in 1998 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, at the age of eighty-five. The board chair for the American Chemical Society, Joan E. Shields, said at the time, “Anna Harrison will be remembered by her colleagues as a clear, strong voice for chemical education and as our first woman president, a person who demonstrated that leadership and dedication recognize no gender.”

During her remarkable career, Dr. Harrison received 20 honorary degrees and many awards, including the Citation of Merit from the University of Missouri, 1960, The Manufacturing Chemists Association Award in College Chemistry Teaching, 1969, and the Chemical Education Award from the American Chemical Society, 1982.

At the time of print, the one-room school could not be located.