Clapp, Margaret (1910–1974)

views updated

Clapp, Margaret (1910–1974)

American educator and historian. Name variations: Margaret Antoinette Clapp. Born Margaret Antoinette Clapp, April 10, 1910, in East Orange, New Jersey; died May 3, 1974, in Tyringham, Massachusetts; dau. of Alfred Chapin Clapp (insurance broker) and Anna (Roth) Clapp; Columbia University, PhD in American history, 1946; never married; no children.

Taught at Todhunter School in New York City (1930–42); was history instructor at City College of New York (1942–44), Douglass College (1945–46), and Columbia University (1946–47); published doctoral dissertation, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow (1947), winning Pulitzer Prize (1948); served as Wellesley College's 8th president, tripling the institution's endowment and building new arts center, faculty club, library wing, and dormitories (1949–66); served as president of Lady Doak College in Madurai, India (1966–67); became cultural attaché to India for US Information Agency (1968) and served as 1st woman minister councilor of public affairs—highest-ranking post at USIA (1970–71); edited The Modern University (1950).