Famous Genealogies

Biography

Elizabeth Lee Hazen was born in Rich, Mississippi, to William Edgar Hazen and Maggie Harper Hazen. She was their second daughter and middle of three children. Her parents died when she was four, and the three children were adopted by an aunt and uncle.

Hazen attended the Mississippi University for Women (then Mississippi Industrial Institute and College), and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree there in 1910. While teaching biology and high school physics in Jackson, Mississippi, she continued her education by attending summer schools at the University of Tennessee and University of Virginia. Following her teaching job, Hazen applied and was accepted into Department of Biology at Columbia for graduate studies. She completed a Master's of Biology at Columbia University in 1917 and a Ph.D. in microbiology there in 1927, one their first female doctoral students. She served as an Army diagnostic laboratory technician during World War I. In the 1920s, while studying at Columbia University, Hazen worked with Ricin and its effect on Clostridium botulinum toxin.

Source :  http://www.wikipedia.org/