Katherine Rotan was born in 1889[1] to mother Kate Sturm McCall Rotan[2][3] and father Edward Rotan of Waco, Texas. She was one of nine children.[3]
Drinker attended Bryn Mawr College, graduating in 1910. She then attended the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1914 with her medical degree.[4]
In 1916, Drinker began a job at Harvard University School of Public Health.[4] She and her husband researched the Radium Girls, industrial workers who became ill after regularly ingesting minute amounts of radium. Their publication on the subject is now regarded as "a classic in the field".[5] When the Journal of Industrial Hygiene was established in 1919, Drinker was one of its first managing editors.[6]
Drinker died on March 15, 1956, in Cataumet, Massachusetts, at the age of 66.[4] She died of leukemia.[5]
Drinker married Cecil Kent Drinker in 1910.[7] They had a daughter, Anne Sandwith Zinsser, and a son, Cecil K. Drinker, Jr.[5]
