Women’s History Month: Remembering pioneering figures at UChicago
The University of Chicago began as an institution as a particularly progressive place for female students considering the time, led in the early 20th century by strong leadership of early advocates Alice Freeman Palmer and Marion Talbot, both recruited by UChicago’s first president, William Rainey Harper. Yet, as the case across the US in the last century, integrating the sexes into the curriculum, research agenda, and extracurricular life proved to be a difficult and perhaps unfinished task, as outlined by the 2009 University of Chicago Library exhibit, On Equal Terms: Education Women at the University of Chicago.
In honor of Women’s History Month, a national observance commemorating and encouraging the study and celebration of the vital role of women in American history, we’ve outlined nine women with ties to UChicago—including former staff, faculty, and alumni—who made an impact on not just the University, but also the world.
EARLY 20TH CENTURY
Marion Talbot
University’s first Dean of Women
During her three decades at the University, Talbot used her positions to passionately advocate for women’s equality in education. As Dean of Women, she supervised nearly every aspect of lives of the women undergraduate and graduate students at UChicago, was later elevated to full professor as head of the Department of Household Administration. She was also instrumental in the development and function of Ida Noyes Hall, which opened in 1916 to provide women a place to fine, socialize, and swim.
Sophonisba Breckinridge
UChicago Law School’s first female graduate and social work pioneer
After earning a PhD in political science in 1901, Breckinridge would go on to become the first woman at UChicago to be granted a named professorship, and in 1905, began teaching what may have been the first women’s studies course in the US. By 1920, she and Edith Abbott cofounded the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, one of the first graduate schools of social work in the country.
Georgiana Rose Simpson
First Black women to earn a PhD in the US
Despite facing racism and discrimination throughout her academic career, Simpson would earn three degrees from the University of Chicago—an AB in 1911, AM in 1920, and a PhD in 1921, when she was 55 years old. She became the first Black women to earn a PhD with her dissertation on German Romanticism titled, Herder’s Conception of ‘Das Volk'. She would go on to become a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
MID-20TH CENTURY
Katherine Dunham 
Pioneering dancer and anthropologist
During the 1930s, as an anthropology major in the College, Dunham traveled alone to the Caribbean to research dance traditions that slaves had brought from Africa. She adapted what she had learned for her company, the nation’s first self-supporting Black dance troupe, traveling in the US and in 57 other countries from the 1940s to 1960s. She famously starred in Cabin in the Sky on Broadway in 1940, and in some Hollywood films. The style she developed from her study of the African diaspora, the Dunham Technique, is still used widely today.
Katharine Graham
Storied publisher of the Washington Post
After graduation, Graham, AB’38, decided to enter the family business as a reporter, eventually returning to Washington, D.C., to work for her father, who owned the struggling Washington Post. After the death of her husband, Graham was forced to take over the helm, and during her nearly three-decade tenure, she transformed the paper into a journalism powerhouse, presided over the Post’s historic decision to publish the Pentagon Papers and its investigate reporting on the Watergate scandal.
LATE 20TH CENTURY
Janet D. Rowley
Cancer genetics pioneer
Before Rowley, few scientists suspected that chromosomal aberrations caused cancer, but a series of her fundamental discoveries in the 1970s while a professor of medicine at UChicago changed the way that cancer was understood, opened the door to development of new treatments, and created a model that still drives cancer research. Rowley, U-High’42, PhB’45, SB’46, MD’48, was later awarded the Lasker Award, the National Medal of Science, and in 2009, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Susan Sontag
Well-known intellectual, writer, critic, and activist
The well-known American writer, critic, intellectual, and activist earned her undergraduate degree at UChicago in 1951 at just the age of 18 before going on to become, as some believed, one of the most influential critics of her generation. Her most famous writings include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and Regarding the Pain of Others (1999) in addition to her fictional novels The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992), and In America (1999). Her activism also included her opposition to the Vietnam War and the 1990s conflict in Sarajevo.
Patsy Mink
Political pioneer and first woman of color elected to Congress
Mink, JD’51, one of two women in her class at UChicago’s Law School, found it difficult to get a job post graduation due to ongoing sexism and racism, so she started her own practice, becoming the first Japanese American woman to practice law in her home state of Hawaii. She later moved on to politics, winning a seat in the Hawaii State Senate in 1962 before becoming the first woman of color elected to the US House of Representatives in 1964. As a congresswoman, she fought for gender and racial equality, affordable childcare, bilingual education, and was one of the authors and sponsors of Title IX, which passed in 1972.
Mary Jean Mulvaney
Pioneer in college athletics
One of the first women in to lead a coeducational athletic department in the US, Prof. Emerita Mulvaney presided over the University of Chicago women’s programs move to NCAA Division III early 1980s and was one of the driving forces behind the formation of the University Athletic Association. For her work in her 24 years at UChicago, she would go on to receive the UAA Founders Medal, a lifetime achievement award from Women Leaders in College Sports, and was inducted into the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors Hall of Fame.