Helen Van Zante

Dr. Helen Johnson Van Zante (1906-1990), a distinguished scientist and pioneering developer of the home microwave oven, grew up on a farm in Brookings County, SD. She attended South Dakota State College [SDSC] where she graduated with a degree in mathematics. Later, she pursued advanced graduate work in physics at Iowa State University, which was very unusual study for a woman in the 1930s, where she completed a doctor's degree. While at SDSC, she studied traditional studio arts with Professor Ada B. Caldwell, which led to a lifelong avocation as a painter of still life, landscape, and genre subjects.