Awesome Alums

I’ve been meaning to do a blog post on awesome alums for a few weeks, and Lisa Kudrow’s video above is the perfect excuse. She mentions some great ones in there: in case you didn’t have a piece of paper handy, she names Meryl Streep, Noah Baumbach, herself, John Carlstrom, Judge Richard Roberts, Matthew Brelis, Phil Griffin, Chip Reid, Vera Cooper Rubin, andSau Lan Wu. What she doesn’t touch on is a few of my favorite, more historical alumnae; the pioneering Vassar women who changed the world after leaving Vassar College. Let me introduce you, very briefly, to a few…

Ellen Swallow Richards, class of 1870, was the first woman ever admitted to M.I.T., and later taught there, essentially founding the field of ecology. On top of all that, she was featured in a Wonder Woman comic for those groundbreaking accomplishments.

Grace Murray Hopper, class of 1928, is one of my favorites. She was the inventor of the first complier in computer programming. After graduating from Vassar with a degree in mathematic and physics—and remember, this is 1928—she went on to a Ph.D. at Yale. She returned to Vassar to teach math, and then enlisted in the Navy, eventually becoming a rear admiral. While in the Navy, she worked on the “Harvard Mark I,” the first computer. While doing so, she gave the world the term “debugging,” when she fixed a computer glitch by literally removing a moth from the machine. You can see an old video here in which she explains what a nanosecond is. And here’s an old video interview with David Letterman in which she proves her considerable wit and charm.

Last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most important poets of the 20th century and a member of the Vassar class of 1934. She was the poet Laureate of the United State from 1949 to 1950 and receives a Pulitzer Prize in 1956. Of course, she was hardly the first Vassar woman to win the prize; Edna St.Vincent-Millay, Vassar class of 1917, won a Pulizer in 1923, only six years after she graduated.

There are many, many more, but you’ll have to look them up on your own. Have fun!