Hanna H. Gray, former president of the University of Chicago, will speak at the MIT commencement on Friday, June 9.

"As president of the University of Chicago for 15 years, Hannah Gray Played a crucial role in defining the importance of research universities to the health of the nation," said MIT President Charles M. Vest.

Gray, who served as president of the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1993, is a historian with special interests in the history of humanism, political and historical thought and politics in the Renaissance and Reformation. She taught history at the University of Chicago from 1961 to 1972 and is now the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor of History.

Born in Heidelberg, Germany Gray received her BA degree from Bryn Mawr in 1950 and her Ph.D. in history from Harvard University 1957. From 1950 to 1952, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University.

Gray was an instructor at Bryn Mawr in 1953 and 1954 and taught at Harvard from 1955 to 1960. She returned to Harvard as a visiting lecturer in 1963-64.

In 1961, she became a member of the University of Chicago's faculty as assistant professor of history. She became associate professor in 1964.

During her academic career, Grey has been a fellow of the Center of Behavioral Sciences, a visiting scholar at that center a visiting professor at Kappa. She is also an honorary fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford.

A member of the Renaissance Society of America, Gray is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education, and the Council on Foreign Relations of New York.

She holds honorary degrees from a number of colleges and universities, including Oxford, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Duke, and the Universities of Michigan and Toronto.

She is a trustee of Bryn Mawr College, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Marlboro School of Music, and is a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. In addition, Gray is a member of the boards of directors of J.P.Morgan & Co., the Cummings Engine Company,Atlantic Richfield Company and Ameritech.

Gray was one of 12 distinguished foreign-bornAmericans to receive a Medal of Liberty Awardfrom President Reagan at ceremonies marking therekindling of the Statue of Liberty's lamp in1986. In 1991, she received the Presidential Medalof Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award,from President Bush. She received the CharlesFrankel Prize from the National Endowment for theHumanities and the Jefferson Medal from theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1993.

Her husband, Charles M. Gray, is a professor inthe Department of History at the University ofChicago