Katharine McCormick

Katharine Dexter McCormick (August 27, 1875 ? December 28, 1967) was a U.S. biologist, suffragette, philanthropist and, after her husband's death, heir to a substantial part of the McCormick fortune. She is well remembered today for funding most of the research necessary to develop the birth control pill.

Related Topics:
August 27 - 1875 - December 28 - 1967 - Biologist - Suffragette - Philanthropist - McCormick - Birth control pill

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Katherine Dexter was born in Dexter, Michigan, in her grandparents' mansion, Gordon Hall. Following the deaths of her father and brother, she and her mother Josephine moved to Boston. In 1904 McCormick was one of the first women to earn a BSc degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); she majored in biology. She planned to continue her studies, but chose to marry Stanley McCormick, youngest son of Cyrus McCormick, an heir to the International Harvester fortune. They married at the Dexter family chateau in Lake Geneva, Switzerland, in September 1904.

Related Topics:
Dexter, Michigan - Boston - 1904 - BSc - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Stanley McCormick - Cyrus McCormick - Lake Geneva - Switzerland

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Two years after they married Stanley was afflicted with schizophrenia. In 1906 he had to resign his position in his father's company, and in 1909 he was declared legally incompetent. The couple did not have any children.

Related Topics:
Schizophrenia - 1909

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In 1909 McCormick spoke at the first outdoor rally for woman suffrage in Massachusetts. She became vice president and treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and funded the association's publication the Woman's Journal. McCormick organized much of Carrie Chapman Catt's effort to gain ratification for the Nineteenth Amendment. While working with Catt, she met other social activists, including Mary Dennett and Margaret Sanger. In 1920 McCormick became the vice president of the League of Women Voters.

Related Topics:
Woman suffrage - Massachusetts - National American Woman Suffrage Association - Carrie Chapman Catt - Nineteenth Amendment - Mary Dennett - Margaret Sanger - 1920 - League of Women Voters

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Throughout the 1920's McCormick worked with Sanger on birth control issues, McCormick smuggled diaphragms from Europe to New York for Sanger's Clinical Research Bureau, and in 1927 she hosted a reception of delegates attending the 1927 World Population Conference at her home in Geneva. In that year McCormick also turned to the science of endocrinology to aid her husband, believing that a defective adrenal gland caused his schizophrenia. She established the Neuroendocrine Research Foundation at Harvard Medical School, and subsidized the publication of the journal Endocrinology. Stanley died in 1947 and McCormick spent 3 year settling his estate to pay inheritence taxes.

Related Topics:
Diaphragm - Europe - New York - Endocrinology - Adrenal gland - Harvard Medical School - 1947

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In 1951 McCormick met with Gregory Goodwin Pincus. Pincus had been working on developing a hormonal birth control method since the 1930s. McCormick agreed to fund Pincus research into oral contraception and in 1954 she and Pincus got Dr. John Rock to conduct human trials. The FDA approved the sale of the Pill in 1960. McCormick had provided almost the entire $2 million it took to develop and test the oral contraceptive pill. She continued to fund birth control research through the 1960s.

Related Topics:
1951 - Gregory Goodwin Pincus - 1954 - John Rock - FDA - 1960

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She donated money to MIT to build the Stanley McCormick women's dormitories in the 1960s. Following her death in 1967, her will provided $5 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which funded the Katharine Dexter McCormick Library in New York City, and $1 million to the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology.

Related Topics:
Planned Parenthood Federation of America - New York City

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Katharine McCormick is a character in T.C. Boyle's novel Riven Rock (1998), which is mainly about her husband Stanley's mental illness.

Related Topics:
T.C. Boyle - Riven Rock - 1998

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She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.

Related Topics:
Michigan Women's Hall of Fame - 2000

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