27 Facts About Katharine Coman

Katharine Ellis Coman was an American social activist and professor.

Katharine Coman was based at the women-only Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where she created new courses in political economy, in line with her personal belief in social change.

Katharine Coman was the first female statistics professor in the US, the only woman co-founder of the American Economics Association, and author of the first paper published in The American Economic Review.

Katharine Coman shared a home with poet Katharine Lee Bates.

Katharine Coman's mother had graduated from an Ohio female seminary, and her father had been educated at Hamilton College, and thus Coman received much of her early education at home.

Katharine Coman attended the University of Michigan for two years, left college to teach in Ottawa, Illinois for two years, and then returned to university.

Katharine Coman earned a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1880, one of only a handful of women to do so.

Katharine Coman was influenced by the work of John Stuart Mill, which is evident in her later work as economist and historian.

Katharine Coman first taught English rhetoric, and in 1881 became an instructor in history.

Katharine Coman was the first American woman to teach statistics and Wellesley became the only American women's college to offer statistics courses before 1900.

Katharine Coman developed and taught several new courses in economics, history, and rhetoric, including Statistical Study of Economic Problems, Industrial History of the United States, and Conservation of Our Natural Resources, all framed by sociological insights related to social justice.

Katharine Coman was acting dean from 1899 to 1900, during which time she established a new department of economics and sociology, becoming its head in 1900.

Katharine Coman retired from full-time teaching at Wellesley in 1913, becoming professor emeritus.

Katharine Coman published The Industrial History of the United States in 1910, the first industrial history of the United States.

Katharine Coman found that settlers were more economically successful than explorers, traders, trappers, and indigenous peoples because the settlers built permanent settlements, reproduced at a higher rate, and established networks of collaboration.

Katharine Coman studied social insurance in England, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden, but poor health prevented her from continuing her research.

Katharine Coman was passionate about social and economic issues, especially women's education, poverty, immigration, and labor.

Katharine Coman served as the president of the electoral board and chair of the standing committee of the National College Settlements Association in 1900.

Katharine Coman organized a group of immigrant women who worked in Boston sweatshops, naming the group an "Evening Club for Tailoresses," and attempted to found a tailor shop that could have been an alternative to sweatshops.

Katharine Coman assisted in organizing the 1910 Chicago garment workers' strike, which involved 40,000 factory workers.

Katharine Coman frequently traveled for her research on economic history; she visited Europe, the American West, Scandinavia, and Egypt.

Katharine Coman first discovered a lump in her left breast in the fall of 1911 and underwent two surgeries in the following months.

Katharine Coman died at home in January 1915 at the age of 58.

At the time of her death, Katharine Coman had been working on an industrial history of New England.

Paxson does credit Katharine Coman with having prepared an extensive bibliography and for providing extensive notes.

Gerald F Vaughn, a contemporary economist writing in 2004, proposes that Coman was America's first female institutional economist.

Katharine Coman was the only woman among the group of economists who founded the American Economic Association in 1885 and she was the first American woman to become a statistics professor.