Mary Bunting | |
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| Born | Mary Ingraham (1910-07-10)July 10, 1910 |
| Died | January 21, 1998(1998-01-21) (aged 87) |
| Occupations | Microbiologist; college president |
| Spouse(s) | (deceased) Clement Smith, M.D. (1975–1988) (deceased) |
| Children | Four |
| Parent(s) | Henry A. Ingraham Mary Shotwell Ingraham |
Mary Ingraham Bunting (July 10, 1910 – January 21, 1998) was a bacterial geneticist and an influentialAmericancollege president;Time profiled her as the magazine's November 3, 1961, cover story.[1][2] She becameRadcliffe College's fifth president in 1960 and was responsible for fully integrating women intoHarvard University.[3]
Bunting was born inBrooklyn,New York, to Henry A. andMary Shotwell Ingraham; she was known as "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother.[2] Her father was an attorney; her mother was the head of the nationalYWCA and helped found theUSO duringWorld War II.[2] Bunting graduated fromVassar College in 1931, and earnedmaster's (1932) anddoctoral degrees (1934) from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison in agriculturalbacteriology.[3][4]
While at Wisconsin, she met Henry Bunting, then a medical student, who went on to teachpathology at theYale University School of Medicine.[2] They married in 1937, and had one daughter and three sons.[4] He died ofbrain cancer in 1954.[2] In 1975, Bunting marriedClement A. Smith, a professor ofpediatrics atHarvard Medical School; he died in 1988.[5][6]
Bunting, amicrobiologist who did work inbacterial genetics,[7] taught and conducted research atBennington College,Goucher College,Yale University, andWellesley College before becoming dean, in 1955, ofDouglass College, the women's school atRutgers University inNew Jersey. She was named president of Radcliffe in 1960. The same year, she was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[8]
Once at Radcliffe, Bunting gained national attention for identifying a societal problem she called a "climate of unexpectation" for girls, which resulted in "the waste of highly talented educated womanpower."[9] She toldTime:
'Adults ask little boys what they want to do when they grow up. They ask little girls where they got that pretty dress. We don't care what women do with their education.'[2]
Bunting brought change to Radcliffe. During her tenure, Radcliffe women began to receive Harvard degrees, women were admitted to the university's graduate and business schools, and the Radcliffe Graduate School merged with Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.[3] She also founded the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, a multidisciplinary postgraduate center of advanced studies for women; it was later renamed the Bunting Institute in her honor.[10]
Bunting was named "Outstanding Woman of the Year" in the field of education byWho's Who, and received the National Institute of Social Scientists' gold medal in 1962.[5] In 1964, Bunting took a leave of absence from Radcliffe to serve on theU.S. Atomic Energy Commission; she was the first woman to ever do so.[3] Bunting was a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was awarded over a dozen honorary degrees.[5]Smith College,[11]Southern Methodist University,[9] and theUniversity of Vermont[12] are a few of the schools to have honored her.
She left Radcliffe in 1972, and became special assistant to the president ofPrinceton University, where she remained until 1975. She retired toCambridge, Massachusetts, and then toNew Hampshire, where she died in 1998.[5]
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