Dorothy Anna Hahn was born on April 9, 1876 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, Carl S. Hahn, born in Germany, was a teacher and a scholar and her mother was Mary Deborah Beaver Hahn. Hahn attended Bryn Mawr College from 1895-1899, graduating with a B.A. in 1899. She taught at Pennsylvania College for Women from 1899-1906. Hahn attended the Universitat Leipzig from 1906-1907, and was a Fellow at Bryn Mawr College from 1907-1908. She received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1916. Hahn was a member of the Mount Holyoke College faculty in the Chemistry Department from 1908 until her retirement in June 1941. Hahn wrote many publications and co-authored three books in the field of organic chemistry. She was seventy-four years old when she died on December 10, 1950 in South Hadley, Massachusetts.