Mary I. Bunting-Smith

The fifth president of Radcliffe College, Mary I. Bunting-Smith died Jan. 21 at the age of 87.

During her tenure as president from 1960 to 1972, Bunting-Smith worked to integrate women into Harvard University, introduced the House system to Radcliffe and raised funds for the construction of Hilles Library and Currier House.

"She had a clear-eyed sense of where women were heading at a time when Princeton and Yale were all-male institutions," said former Harvard President Derek C. Bok.

According to current Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson, Bunting-Smith's "statesmanship, courage and imperturbability guided Harvard and Radcliffe's alliance during the turbulent period of national unrest."

When she arrived as president, one of Bunting-Smith's first proposals was to create an institute where women could overcome a climate of low expectations.

"[The creation of the Bunting Institute] was very, very timely because people didn't see the pendulum beginning to shift as early as she did," Bok said.

Since Bunting-Smith founded the institute in 1960, more than 1,300 women have held the one-year Bunting fellowships.

Bunting-Smith was a visionary who saw Harvard as a platform to implement her ideas, said her son Charles I. Bunting.

She is survived by eight children and step-children and four grandchildren.

William S. Burroughs '36

Beat Generation novelist and icon William S. Burroughs '36 died Aug. 2, in Lawrence, Kans., of a heart attack. He was 83.

The 1959 publication of Burroughs' experimental novel Naked Lunch challenged conventional literary forms in depicting an underground world fighting a self-destructing technological society and was the subject of a precedent-setting obscenity trial because of its violent and sexually explicit content.

Burroughs also dabbled in the visual arts and appeared in several films, including Drugstore Cowboy and Twister, as well as Nike commercials.

Robert W. Chasteney Jr. '31