Radcliffe's First

Quite a different sort of academic executive was Ada Louise Comstock, first fulltime president of Radcliffe College, who ruled the school with firmness and vision from 1923-43. Last week, still tall, erect and stately at 81, Ada Comstock Notestein (she resisted the suit of Yale History Professor Wallace Notestein for her full 20 years at Radcliffe, married him only after she retired) journeyed to Radcliffe Yard, accepted congratulations as a dormitory was dedicated to her.

The Radcliffe that Ada Louise Comstock took over in 1923 was something of a makeshift institution. In 1879 a committee of Cambridge ladies asked Harvard President Charles W. Eliot for permission to hire Harvard professors to teach young ladies. The ladies got their permission and hired their profs--and also female chaperons to sit beside them as they taught. The college prospered under Miss Comstock, but until the last year of her reign, she still had to lure Harvard faculty members each year to teach part time at Radcliffe. Then, in 1943, she outraged old Harvards, gave malicious delight to their Yale and Princeton acquaintances by negotiating the deal that allowed Radcliffe girls to attend Harvard classes, in effect brought coeducation to both schools.

Last week, the former president spoke with warmth of "two convictions which never failed me--that the foundation principle on which Radcliffe was built was solid as rock, and that no college could be happier in those who served and supported and believed in her." Few would deny that chief among those who served is Ada Comstock Notestein.

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