A graduate of the University of Chicago, Morgan held brief teaching appointments at smaller schools before earning a doctorate and taking the position at Berkeley.
Her work correlated decreasing bone density with increasing age and connected serum cholesterol levels with dietary fat intake.
Iota Sigma Pi, an American chemistry honor society, presents the Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award to outstanding women in the field.
[10] It is not known whether the University of Illinois extended an offer to Morgan, but in any case, she interviewed for a faculty position at Berkeley in the Department of Home Economics.
"[4] One of Morgan's stated interests was to lead a program of research into household practices; she did not want to teach traditional home economics principles if they could not be supported by science.
Adding to the difficulty of the situation was the fact that university officials had previously criticized Morgan for maintaining academic standards that were too high for a home economics program.
Because of the school's status as a land-grant university, the program was required to follow California State Department of Education directives to produce graduates trained as teachers, agricultural extension specialists and dietitians.
However, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the university in the early 20th century, saw those fields as vocations, and he encouraged Morgan to continue her focus on science.
Colleagues were surprised when she had the baby, as she had not mentioned being pregnant and she hid the physical evidence of her pregnancy with her long laboratory jacket.
She said that dietitians would not be fully appreciated within the medical field without a strong grounding in science and an ability to implement the research findings of laboratory scientists.
Wanting to establish dietetics as a profession rather than a service industry, Morgan emphasized the "cleavage of the dietitian to the physician's end of the hospital table, and away from the nurse's.
"[14] This statement itself had little effect at the time, however, as dietetics remained primarily concerned with the practical aspects of feeding people in the hospital.
"[16]Some of the most significant scientific research to emerge from Morgan's laboratory concerned the biochemistry of vitamins and the nutritional value of foods.
[18] Late in her career, she was involved in an Agricultural Experiment Station project that examined nutrition among older people in San Mateo County.
That work yielded two important conclusions: that bone density began to decline in women between the ages of 50 and 65, and that dietary fat intake led to increases in serum cholesterol.
Morgan wore the stole on at least two important occasions – her presentation of the study data in 1939 and her Garvan Medal award ceremony ten years later.
She examined the food quality at San Quentin Prison in 1939, and in the 1940s she was the founding chair of the California Nutrition War Committee and served on the Office of Scientific Research and Development.
She co-authored a textbook, Experimental Food Study, with Irene Sanborn Hall, and she wrote detailed histories of the Alpha Nu and Iota Sigma Pi honor societies.
[2] Just after Morgan's retirement, the University of California System decided to offer home economics only at the Davis and Santa Barbara campuses, and the nutrition program was continued at Berkeley.
The Iota Sigma Pi chemistry honor society issues the Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award to recognize women who make outstanding contributions to the field.