Sara Jane Rhoads was born on June 1, 1920, in
Kansas City, Missouri, to Errett Stanley Rhoads and Charlotte Rhoads, née Kraft. She was the youngest of six siblings. Rhoads worked in the development department of the Lindsay Light and Chemical Company in Chicago between 1941 and 1943. She then taught at the Radford School for Girls in
El Paso, Texas (1943-1944) and at
Hollins College in
Virginia (1944-1945). In September 1948 Sara Jane Rhoads moved to the
University of Wyoming, where she worked until her retirement in 1984. In more than 35 years at the university, she devoted herself to teaching and to establishing the chemistry department. She initiated the University of Wyoming's undergraduate research program, and served as the department's director from 1967-1968. In 1959, Rhoads was the first person at the University of Wyoming to receive a grant from the
National Science Foundation. As of 1971
N. Rebecca Raulins was the only other woman chemist on the University of Wyoming faculty: nonetheless the university actually ranked higher than most American universities of the time in hiring women faculty. Rhoads received the national
Manufacturing Chemists' Association Award for Outstanding College Teaching in 1964, and the George Duke Humphrey Distinguished Faculty Award in 1974. She received the
American Chemical Society's
Garvan–Olin Medal in 1982. The university established the annual Sara Jane Rhoads & Rebecca Raulins Lecture in Organic Chemistry in 1992. Rhoads' nephew
Richard E. Smalley admired her and was inspired by her to pursue a career as a chemist. He worked in her laboratories in the 1960s. Smalley became a pioneer in the field of
nanotechnology and received the 1996
Nobel Prize in Chemistry with
Robert F. Curl and
Harold Kroto for the discovery of
fullerenes. ==Awards==