Hazel E. Munsell was born on April 9, 1891 in Monson, Massachusetts. She attended Monson Academy for five years before coming to Mount Holyoke, where she received her B.A. in 1914. Between 1917 and 1918 she returned to Mount Holyoke as a Graduate and Teaching Assistant in Chemistry. She then taught at various schools from 1914-1920, when she enrolled at Columbia University. She received an M.A. in 1921 and a Ph.D. in 1924. From 1924-1942 she worked in the Nutrition Laboratory for the United States Department of Agriculture. She was in charge of a clinical research laboratory at the School of Tropical Medicine in San Juan, Puerto Rico from 1942-1944, and worked as a Special Investigator at the Nutrition Laboratory at the Pentagon between 1944-1946. In 1946 she was appointed a research associate in food technology at M.I.T., and helped establish a food analysis laboratory at the National Institute of Nutrition in Quito, Ecuador from 1950 through 1952. In 1953 she returned to Munson to care for her aged father. She taught chemistry and science at National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., from 1955 to 1957, after which she retired. She published extensively on nutrition from 1924 to 1965. Hazel Munsell died on August 17, 1989 in Holyoke, Massachusetts.