In his concluding address as President of Radcliffe College last night, Wilbur K. Jordan spoke on the life of Ann Radcliffe, the seventeenth century English philantropist for whom the College is named. Although gaps exist in the historical documentation of her life, Jordan said, there is abundant evidence that Ann Radcliffe was a "truly remarkable woman" and a "sagaciously tough lady."

In 1638, finding herself childless, a widow, and sole executor of a large estate, she began, in a "wary, hardbitten, and vigilant manner" to carry on the tradition of the merchant aristocracy to which she had always belonged.

Holding in her own name a wealth of land, ships' cargoes, and bullion, she was able nearly to treble her estate within the next 20 years, directly profiting from the economic instability caused by the Long Parliament and the Civil War.

Her gift of 100 pounds to Harvard in 1643, the largest the College had received up to that time, was directly solicited by John Weld, from Roxbury. Weld persuaded Ann Radcliffe, who never saw America, both to set up a trust fund, the income of which was to be used solely for scholarship purposes, and to name his son, a Junior in the College, first recipient of the award.

When the younger Weld was in the same year expelled from the College on two counts of local burglary, and his departure solemnized by a personal whipping from President Dunster, no successor to the scholarship was designated, and the gift became merged with general College funds.

Years later, when women were first being allowed to study at the College, the Corporation again recognized Ann Radcliffe's gift as a separate fund and decided to name the women's annex for her.

President Jordan, who is an authority on English History of the Stuart and Tudor periods, announced his resignation last spring, effective in January.