Rachel Holloway Lloyd was introduced to chemistry by her husband, Franklin Lloyd, who worked as a chemist and kept a chemical laboratory in their home. After her husband’s death in 1865, she traveled abroad for several years and eventually returned to the US. In 1875, Lloyd enrolled in summer school at Harvard University, where she learned to do chemical research. Interested in teaching at the collegiate level, she was determined to earn a doctorate. No universities in the US would accept a female candidate in chemistry, so Lloyd attended the University of Zurich in Switzerland, graduating in 1887. Lloyd joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska, where her research centered on chemical analyses of the concentration of sugars in sugar beets. Her scientific reports helped establish the economic viability of sugar beet farming in the latter part of the 19th century. Lloyd became a full professor in 1888 and was promoted to the head of the department in 1892. She continued to teach until 1894, when she resigned due to ill health.
