Filling in the Pieces: More on the Life of Jane Hinton, V’49

When Bellwether published a look at Penn Libraries’ recently acquired Jane Hinton Collection last fall, the historical record suggested Hinton had retired in her early forties—an oddity that nagged at least one reader. Donald Hoenig, V’78, (Read the story here.) contacted the School to set the record straight.

Hoenig and Hinton were colleagues in the early 1980s, two of 13 USDA field veterinarians covering New England. She trained him on the 60-odd Massachusetts-based research facilities under his jurisdiction.  

“Jane knew her territory cold. She moved through it with authority and had no patience for anything that got in the way of doing the job well,” he said. “An impressive force to be reckoned with.” The idea that she had quietly stepped away from federal service decades earlier was simply implausible to him. “That’s the last thing that Jane Hinton would have done.”

Hoenig remembers a colleague asking if he’d heard of the Hinton Test. He hadn’t. So, he asked Hinton about it. She told him about her role in developing the global standard for antibiotic susceptibility testing: the Mueller-Hinton agar, which she co-created decades earlier. Hoenig had no idea he’d been working alongside a legend in modern microbiology: “She was all about simply getting on with the job.”

Shaping the puzzle

Hoenig’s account of Hinton’s life is one more piece of the Hinton puzzle. Since Bellwether’s original story ran, Penn Libraries acquired a second set of materials, bringing the Jane Hinton Collection to more than seven boxes.

“This newer tranche fills in much more detail about Hinton’s later life,” said Kelin Baldridge, processing archivist at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. “Some documents suggest she maintained a clinical practice beyond 1959, and UDSA pay stubs documented her government service well into the 1980s.”

The new material also brings her personality into sharper focus. There are notebooks from her Penn Vet days, beautifully scripted and with animal doodles; photographic negatives with people from different periods of her life; correspondence from loved ones fighting in Europe during WWII; and lots of animal pictures, including a scrapbook of kittens, maybe pets.  

What emerges is the picture of a woman who lived life with purpose, love, and curiosity. She knew her own mind and was firm in her professional judgment, unintimidated by bureaucracy, and consistent in advocating for herself and the animals in her care. She navigated a federal system that was not designed with Black women in mind, and she did it on her own terms. It is, Hoenig might say, exactly who she was and why she must be remembered.

The Jane Hinton Collection of Manuscripts, Books, and Photos is open to researchers at Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.