Hamilton, Alice (1869-1970)

US physician, social reformer, and antiwar campaigner who pioneered the study of industrial diseases and industrial toxicology.

Hamilton was born in New York State and educated at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins Medical School, and in Germany at Leipzig and Munich. As a member of the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, she supervised in 1910 a survey of industrial poisons. She and her staff identified many hazardous procedures and consequently state legislature introduced safety measures in the workplace and medical examinations for workers at risk. The following year Hamilton was appointed special investigator for the US Bureau of Labor and rapidly became the leading authority on lead poisoning in particular and industrial diseases in general. She lectured at Harvard from 1919, almost 30 years before Harvard accepted women as medical students.

During and after World War I she attended International Congresses of Women and was a pacifist until 1940, when she urged US participation in World War II. During the 1940s and 1950s she spoke out on such subjects as contraception, civil liberties, and workers' rights. In the 1960s she was still considered worthy of attention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation when she protested against US military actions in Vietnam.

Hamilton's Industrial Poisons in the United States established her reputation worldwide. She also wrote the classic textbook Industrial Toxicology (1934) and an autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943).