An educator, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz administered the Agassiz School for Girls, (1855-1859); managed the program for Private Collegiate Instruction for Women (also known as Harvard Annex); was president of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women (1882-1894) and first president of Radcliffe College (1894-99), after which she was honorary president (1899-1903). Agassiz also negotiated a permanent institutional tie with Harvard and the incorporation of Radcliffe in 1894; and raised funds for the endowment and purchase of Radcliffe Yard and Radcliffe quadrangle. See also the Records of Radcliffe College President Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz.

A writer, teacher, and composer, Marita Bonner was educated at Radcliffe College (A.B. 1922). She published plays, essays, and short fiction in The Crisis and Opportunity including two prize-winning essays: "On Being Young--A Woman--and Colored" (1925) and "Drab Rambles" (1927). She also published one-act modernist plays The Purple Flower (1928) and Exit, an Illusion (1929). She won the Wanamaker music prize for "Negro Music" in 1927. She taught school from 1922 to 1931, 1944 to 1945, and 1950 to 1963. The collection consists of biographical data, family photographs, correspondence, published and unpublished writings, and articles about Bonner.

Annie Leland Barber graduated in the first class of Radcliffe College (the Harvard Annex) in 1883 and subsequently taught at the Parsons School in Greenfield, Mass. and Miss Brown's School in New York City. After her marriage to Ward R. Clarke, a Unitarian minister, in 1901, she was active in woman's suffrage in New Hampshire and in the church. This collection includes diaries, English themes, letters and reminiscences that document the early years of Radcliffe College. Correspondence with family and friends describes teaching, suffrage work, and married life. Additionally there are published articles, biographical and autobiographical articles, and unpublished poetry and prose.

This collection contains letters from Arthur Gilman concerning the founding of Radcliffe and the Cambridge School. See also Scrapbook of Arthur Gilman, a scrapbook of clippings (some annotated by Gilman) documenting the evolution of Radcliffe College and women's higher education in the United States and in England.

This collection consists of transcripts of reminiscences of alumnae and College officers recorded 1972-1973 and essays on student life written in 1965 by members of the classes of 1899 through 1965. Subjects covered include negotiations over the merger with Harvard 1970-1971, social and academic life, athletics, student government, the experience of African American students, and descriptions of Radcliffe officers and Harvard faculty.

Known by some as the "mother of multiculturalism," Baker began her career as an elementary school teacher. During a parent-teacher conference, the father of one of her students noticed the class was learning about the history of Michigan and had created a paper doll timeline that featured Michigan explorers. When he asked why there were no Black explorers, Baker began to question the standard curriculum and why she had automatically assumed there were none. This event served as the catalyst for her involvement in the development of multicultural education, a teaching approach that integrates the influences and contributions of racial and ethnic minorities and women to the development of society in the United States and explores diverse cultural beliefs and values. Baker held a position in the Carter administration as Chief of Minorities and Women's Programs at the National Institute of Education. She was the first African American woman to be named National Executive Director of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), and she also served on the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

Educator and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, Charlotte Eugenia Hawkins Brown was active in the National Council of Negro Women and the N.C. Teachers Association and was the first black woman to serve on the national board of the YWCA. She lectured and wrote about black women, education, and race relations.

Greatwood contracted polio when she was three months old and underwent a number of treatments, including a stay at the Reconstructive Home for Infantile Paralysis in Ithaca, N.Y. She attended public schools in Buffalo, N.Y., graduating from high school in 1928. She graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo in 1937 and unsuccessfully sought employment as a public school teacher. To gain experience, she taught piano and Sunday school, and she was eventually hired as a substitute teacher in the Buffalo public school system, and finally, in 1946, as a permanent teacher at McKinley Vocational High School. In 1951 Greatwood was asked to serve as director of Christian education at St. Paul’s (Episcopal) Cathedral in Buffalo. Resolved to continue her religious studies, she entered Union Theological Seminary in New York City, graduating in 1956. She taught at the National Cathedral School for Girls (Washington, D.C.) and was director of religious education in a Presbyterian church in Virginia before returning in 1963 to teach high school in Buffalo. Greatwood traveled widely and lived in Scotland for a year, where she studied at the University of Edinburgh.

A physician who was the first woman professor at Harvard University, Hamilton also worked as a resident researcher at Hull House, a researcher of industrial poisons for the U.S. Department of Labor, and a member of the League of Nations Health Organization and President Hoover's Committee on Social Trends. The collection includes correspondence, articles, speeches, notes, clippings, and awards documenting Hamilton's professional life and interests. The largest series contains her medical papers, including articles and notes on chemical compounds, their hazards in the workplace, and industry protest over her findings.

Ida Louise Jackson was the first black woman to teach in the public schools of Oakland, Calif., and one of the founders of the Rho chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first black sorority on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Jackson was interviewed by Gabrielle Morris, 1984-1985, as part of the University of California Black Alumni Project sponsored by the Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Known for establishing the research field of gender and political science, Susan Moller Okin was a liberal theorist whose feminist perspective challenged the established thinking on political philosophers regarding questions about gender and the family. This collection includes correspondence with colleagues and publishers, typewritten draft manuscripts, syllabi, teaching notes, and class readings. The materials document Okin's development of her gender and political science courses and her struggles asserting herself in a male-dominated academic department.

Suffragist and mathematician Helen Barten (Brewster) Owens received her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1910 from Cornell University, where her husband, Frederick William Owens, was a professor of mathematics. She served as chair of the Resolutions Committee for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (1910), organized the College Equal Suffrage League at Cornell (1911), and was a paid organizer and chair of the Sixth Judicial District for the Empire State Campaign Committee (1913-1916). She also campaigned for suffrage in Kansas (1911-1912). Owens taught math at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y. (1914-1917) and at Cornell (1917-1922). She was associate editor of American Mathematical Monthly and conducted research on women in mathematics and sciences.