Mary Maples Dunn (1931–2017)

Mary Maples Dunn earned her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College in 1959. Between 1960 and 1985 she served Bryn Mawr variously on the history department faculty, as Dean of the undergraduate college, and as Academic Deputy to the President. She became President of Smith College in 1985, a post she held for ten years. She was the author of William Penn: Politics and Conscience (1967), and co-editor of The Founding of Pennsylvania (1983), and of The World of William Penn (1986). She was also editor of Alexander von Humboldt: Political Essays on the Kingdom of New Spain (1972); and (with Richard S. Dunn) The Papers of William Penn (in four volumes, 1981-87). She has been secretary and president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and a governing board member of the Humanities Research Institute, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Historic Deerfield, and the Marlboro School of Music. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1999. A witty and beloved teacher, capable administrator and highly respected American historian, Mary Maples Dunn became the Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College in 1995 and also served as Acting President of Radcliffe and Acting Dean of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. She served as Co-Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society 2002-2007. In 2010, the William and Mary Quarterly established a new prize in her name to honor scholars in women's history. Mary Dunn died March 19, 2017, at age 85.