• MICROBIOLOGIST
  
• Worked with Rachel Brown to INVENT Nystatin, the FIRST antifungal medicine in the world
• Nystatin has many applications, ranging from curing athlete's foot to cleaning mildew off ancient paintings
• Earned a bachelor of science degree and a certificate in dressmaking (multitalented!) from what became Mississippi University for Women
• Taught physics and biology for six years, then earned a master's degree in microbiology from Columbia University
• Worked at the army diagnostic laboratories, and led the bacterial lab at a hospital in West Virginia
• Earned her doctorate from Columbia at 42 years old
• Got a job at the New York State Department of Health, where she traced outbreaks of anthrax and tularemia, and became the FIRST person to identify the toxin in imported canned fish that had caused illness and even one death in the U.S.
• Met chemist Rachel Brown in 1948, and within a year they developed Nystatin, which was manufactured by ER Squibb and Sons under the name Mycostatin
• Instead of selling the rights to a pharmaceutical company, they founded the nonprofit Research Corporation of New York and patented the drug through that, generating $13 million that supported research grants in immunology, biochemistry, and microbiology, as well as bolstered programs that helped women in science
• Became an associate professor at Albany Medical College, though she continued her work both with Brown and the Department of Health
• Also worked with Brown to develop a pneumonia VACCINE that is still in use today, as well as discover the antibiotics phalamycin and capacidin
• She and Brown were given many joint awards: the Squibb Award in Chemotherapy, the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists (they were the FIRST women to receive this award), and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (they were the second and third women ever to be inducted)

Hazen (left), Brown (right). Photo by Smithsonian Institution [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography: Harvey, Joy and Marilyn B. Ogilvie. "Hazen, Elizabeth Lee." The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, Vol. 1. Routledge, 2000, 573-574.
Vare, Ethlie Ann and Greg Ptacek. Patently Female. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002. Print.

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