Katharine Snodgrass

Katharine Snodgrass
Born(1893-05-09)May 9, 1893
Marion, Indiana, U.S.
DiedSeptember 25, 1930(1930-09-25) (aged 37)
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Education
OccupationEconomist
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (1930)

Katharine Snodgrass (May 9, 1893 – September 25, 1930) was an American economist. She published the 1928 book Copra and Coconut Oil and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930, but died of suicide shortly after suddenly returning from her fellowship research trip.

Biography

Snodgrass was born on May 9, 1893, in Marion, Indiana.[1] After attending Shortridge High School,[2] she obtained a BA at Bryn Mawr College in 1915 and a MA at Columbia University in 1918; both degrees were in economics.[3][1]

Snodgrass lived in the West Village in New York City, and worked as a researcher at the State Charities Aid Association, the War Industries Board, and the Federal Reserve Board.[1][3] She also worked as an associate editor for the New York Journal of Commerce in 1923.[1] From 1924 to 1929, she worked as a research associate at the Food Research Institute of Stanford University,[3] where she obtained her doctorate during then.[1] At the FRI, she worked on her 1928 book Copra and Coconut Oil, centered on the economics of coconut oil.[1] In 1930, she published Margarine as a Butter Substitute, a monograph about the history of the titular product and its associated industry, through Stanford University Press.[4]

Two reviewers for Oil & Fat Industries - John E. Rutzler Jr. and A. P. L. - praised Snodgrass' Copra and Coconut Oil and Margarine as a Butter Substitute for having value for people interested in coconut products and margarine, respectively.[5][4] In a 2024 Science History Institute article, Annabel Pinkney identified Snodgrass among several "Nobel Prize-less, yet impressive and deserving contributors to science", remarking that she "overcame humble rural beginnings and lack of opportunities due to her gender".[1]

In 1930, Snodgrass was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship "to make a study of the dietary fats of Northern Europe, with particular reference to the displacement of dairy fats by vegetable fats, being a study in the economics of food substitution".[3] She went to England in September for that research, but returned to the United States later that month.[1] She died of suicide on September 25, 1930, after falling from out of a fourth-floor room in the University of Minnesota Medical Center, where she was being treated for a nervous disease.[6][1]

Snodgrass had a sister, Margaret Harding, who worked at the University of Minnesota.[6]

Works

  • Copra and Coconut Oil (1928)[5]
  • Margarine as a Butter Substitute (1930)[a]

Notes

  1. ↑ Reviews of this book: [4][7]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Pinkney, Annabel (January 11, 2024). "Ladies Who Lab: Lesser-Known Women in Science, 1920–1970". Science History Institute. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  2. ↑ Collier, Irwin (May 23, 2022). "Columbia. Economics M.A. alumna, Guggenheim Fellow. Katharine Snodgrass, 1918". Economics in the Rear-View Mirror. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Katharine Snodgrass". Guggenheim Fellowships. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 A.P.L. (1931). "Margarine as a Butter Substitute". Oil and Fat Industries. 8 (4): 153–153. doi:10.1007/BF02575001. ISSN 2331-3439.
  5. 1 2 Rutzler, John E. (August 1, 1928). "Fats and oils studies of the food research institute". Oil & Fat Industries. 5 (8): 246. doi:10.1007/BF02562146. ISSN 1558-9331.
  6. 1 2 "Woman Instructor Commits Suicide". Kenosha News. September 26, 1930. p. 14 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ Ravenel, M. P. (1931). "Margarine as a Butter Substitute". American Journal of Public Health and the Nations Health. 21 (5): 589–590. doi:10.2105/AJPH.21.5.589-b. ISSN 0002-9572.
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