On this day in 1875, Ellen Swallow married M.I.T. Professor Robert Hallowell Richards. Three days later, they set off on a wedding trip to Nova Scotia — accompanied by Robert Richards's class in mining engineering. When they returned to Cambridge, Ellen Swallow Richards began working to create a Woman's Laboratory at M.I.T. She was herself the first woman admitted to any scientific school in the United States and the first female graduate of M.I.T. When the Institute became fully coeducational in 1883, the Woman's Laboratory was closed. The following year Ellen Richards was appointed to the faculty as an instructor. Over the next quarter century, while continuing to promote scientific education for women, she founded the new field of home economics.