Effie Alberta Read

Effie Alberta Read (born about 1873 – died September 1, 1930) was an American scientist who researched food safety for the U. S. Food and Drug Administration.

Effie Alberta Read, from a 1913 publication.

Effie Alberta Read, from a 1913 publication.

Early life

Effie Alberta Read was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the daughter of Albert F. Read and Myra A. Davis Read.^[1] She attended Mount Holyoke College from 1896 to 1898, but she earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees at Cornell University (in 1903, 1906, and 1907, respectively), and a medical degree at George Washington University.^[2] Her dissertation topic was the comparative anatomy of olfaction in dogs, cats, and humans.^[3]

Career

While she was a graduate student at Cornell University, she was an assistant in the Histology and Embryology Department, teaching and researching under professor Simon Henry Gage; Gage's expertise in microscopy shaped Read's later work.^[4]

Read's work at the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry (the precursor to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration) focused on the detection of adulterated foods,^[5] following the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.^[6] She invented a quick test, known as the Read Tea Test,^[7] for detecting artificial dyes and other impurities in imported tea.^[8][9] There were legal objections from tea importers, as to the accuracy of the Read Tea Test.^[10][11] The importers' lawsuit was dismissed in 1914.^[12]

Read also worked on testing black pepper for added materials.^[13] She became the Assistant Chief of the Bureau's Microanalytical Laboratory before her retirement in 1930.^[2] She was an associate member of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia from 1914,^[14] and active in the Woman's Clinic Auxiliary.^[15][16]

Personal life

Read died weeks after her retirement, in 1930, from ovarian cancer. She was 57 years old.^[17][18]