Lively Lady

As a freshman at Wellesley College, brown-eyed Margaret Clapp found herself one day on both academic and social probation. She was flubbing physics and had come in too late one night from a date ("The car really did break down"). It was not the best of beginnings, but Margaret Clapp did not let it stop her.

She was graduated from Wellesley in 1930, went on to take a Ph.D. at Columbia University. She taught at Manhattan's progressive Dalton Schools, later became the first woman teacher in the history department of New York's City College. She later became an assistant professor at Brooklyn College and last year won a Pulitzer Prize for a scholarly biography, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow. Last week, at 39, pretty, petite Historian Clapp won Wellesley's top honor: out of 150 candidates, she was chosen the college's eighth president.

Retiring President Mildred McAfee Horton thought Dr. Clapp was "ideal." Wellesley's 1,600 girls would probably agree. They would find in their new president a lively first lady who scorns bridge and refuses to take up knitting. But she can read Scott by the hour ("no problems, no psychoses"), plays the violin, and can make students sit up and take notice when she lectures on American history.

She hopes that as president she will have time to teach again. "I'd like the kids to have more willingness to try things," Margaret Clapp says. "I think that perhaps they should be encouraged to make mistakes--make fools of themselves --and afterward be shown that it doesn't make so much difference after all."

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