Mary Bunting

Mary Ingraham Bunting (July 10, 1910 – January 21, 1998) was a bacterial geneticist and an influential American college president; Time profiled her as the magazine's November 3, 1961, cover story. She became Radcliffe College's fifth president in 1960 and was responsible for fully integrating women into Harvard University.

Personal life back, l to r, Prof. Albert M. Sacks, Pauli Murray, Dr. Mary Bunting; seated, l to r, Alma Lutz, suffragette and Harvard Law School Forum Guest, and Betty Friedan

Bunting was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Henry A. and Mary Shotwell Ingraham; she was known as "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother. While a student in Wisconsin, she was flatmates with Amelia Frank.

While at Wisconsin, she met Henry Bunting, then a medical student, who went on to teach pathology at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Professional life Bunting, a microbiologist who did work in bacterial genetics, taught and conducted research at Bennington College, Goucher College, Yale University, and Wellesley College before becoming dean, in 1955, of Douglass College, the women's school at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She was named president of Radcliffe in 1960. The same year, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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." She told Time:

'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.'

Bunting was named "Outstanding Woman of the Year" in the field of education by Who's Who, and received the National Institute of Social Scientists' gold medal in 1962. Southern Methodist University, are a few of the schools to have honored her.

She left Radcliffe in 1972, and became special assistant to the president of Princeton University, where she remained until 1975. She retired to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then to New Hampshire, where she died in 1998.