Born in 1903 as Elizabeth Louise Derr in
Heron, Montana, she grew up near
Clark Fork, Idaho and earned a bachelor's degree in English from the
University of Washington in
Seattle in 1930. With a new focus on pre-med, she took two courses before changing her mind again. Hoping to become a psychiatrist, she attended the
University of Minnesota Medical School in
Duluth in 1932–1933, before her funds ran out, which caused her to leave her university studies entirely. She returned to Seattle and to her University of Washington anthropologist-husband
Melville Jacobs, whom she had married on January 3, 1931.
Anthropology Jacobs had no formal training in anthropology but came to it via her marriage to anthropologist
Melville Jacobs. As a result, she sometimes neglected topics of traditional interest to anthropologists, such as place names, ethnobiology, and material culture and focused on topics traditionally given less attention, particularly the lives of women.
Psychotherapy In the 1940s. Elizabeth returned to the University of Washington to attend the School of Social Work. She earned her master's in psychiatric social work in 1949. and Elizabeth dedicated much of her later years to her work as a psychotherapist. She died in 1983. ==Select publications==