Kathryn Hach-Darrow

Hach Chemical was instrumental in standardizing water-purification tests and pioneered many world-standard analytical instruments. Their tests were designed to be simple and effective, with nontechnical directions that made their products easy for both chemists and non-chemists to use. As of 2012, about 70 percent of municipalities in the United States used Hach Company instrumentation, allowing them to detect impurities in water at the parts-per-billion level.

After Clifford's death in 1990, Kitty was named Hach Co.'s chairman and CEO and her son Bruce assumed the role of president. In 1995, she married Donald Darrow, a retired airline pilot, becoming Kitty Hach-Darrow. In 1999, Kitty and her son Bruce sold the Hach company to Danaher Corporation.

Hach Chemical Company was incorporated in 1951, went public in 1968. The company moved its headquarters to Loveland, Colorado, in 1978, and was renamed Hach Company in 1980. Under Kitty Hach's management, the company developed an employee base of over 900 people and became one of the top women owned businesses in the United States. Kathryn Hach-Darrow was president, chief operating officer, and CEO of the Hach company.

Clifford did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1947, because he and other students were co-opted to work on war-time projects at the university. It was difficult to find jobs after graduation. Eventually, Clifford was hired part-time by a filtration company in Ames, Iowa to analyze water. Seeing how the water-treatment plant worked gave Clifford the idea for a process and a product: a simplified method of analysis that would enable workers to treat water with powdered formulas rather than heavy chemical solutions.

He raised startup money by selling the rights to another invention. The Walter Kidde fire extinguisher company had approached the University of Iowa for ideas for generating carbon dioxide to fight fires. Clifford came up with a patentable idea, and sold it to the fire company for $15,000. With the money the Hachs co-founded Hach Chemical Company in 1947. They bought an acre of land in Ames, Iowa, and built a cement block building which became their plant. They lived with their three children in a small apartment at the plant.

Kathryn and her first husband Clifford C. Hach met as students at Iowa State University, and married in 1943. "I knew right away that this guy was going to build a chemical company," she says. "He didn't care how big Dow was or how big DuPont was, he was going to build his own company."

Kathryn "Kitty" Hach-Darrow (October 20, 1922 – June 4, 2020) was an American businesswoman and philanthropist who co-founded the Hach Chemical Company in 1947 with her first husband Clifford C. Hach (pronounced hɑ:k). She was essential to the company's expansion, flying her own plane to small airfields across the country to sell water purification kits. She became president, chief operating officer, and CEO of the Hach company.