Breckinridge, Sophonisba Preston, 1866–1948, American pioneer social worker, educator, and author, b. Lexington, Ky., grad. Wellesley, 1888, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1901. She was the first woman to be admitted (1897) to the bar in Kentucky, but abandoned the practice of law to enter social work at Hull House, Chicago. After 1902 she taught at the Univ. of Chicago, where later she was professor of social economy (1925–29) and then professor of public welfare (1929–33). In 1934 she was president of the American Association of Schools of Social Work. As a delegate to the Pan-American Conference at Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1933, she was the first woman to represent the United States at an international conference. Her published works include The Delinquent Child and the Home (with Edith Abbott, 1912), Family Welfare in a Metropolitan Community (1924), Public Welfare Administration in a Metropolitan Community (1927), and Women in the Twentieth Century (1933).
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