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Alice Catherine Evans (January 29, 1881 – September 5, 1975) was a pioneering American microbiologist who conducted research at the United States Department of Agriculture. She worked on refining manufacturing processes for cheese and butter and investigated the sources of bacterial contamination in milk products. She studied the disease brucellosis, then known as undulant fever, linking it to the consumption of cow's milk containing the bacterium Brucella abortus. Evans advocated the pasteurization of milk, but her results were greeted with skepticism, partially because she was a woman and did not have a PhD, only being accepted when scientists around the world confirmed her findings in the 1920s.
This photograph shows Evans at work in a laboratory at the Dairy Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, taken some time between 1913 and 1918.Photograph credit: National Photo Company; restored by Adam Cuerden