“When I was at Radcliffe, I found that if I called one or two local rinks and they hadn’t sold the ice for the next morning they’d let me skate free at 4 or 5 a.m.” recalls Tenley E. Albright, Radcliffe College Class of 1957. An Olympic silver medalist at the age of 16, Albright became the first American to win the gold in ladies figure skating in 1956—while enrolled as an undergraduate.

At Radcliffe, Albright often watched the sun rise while practicing her routines alone on the ice, sometimes heading straight from practice to class.

“One day I forgot to bring my regular clothes to the rink and had to go to class in my skating clothes. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, what do I do?’ but I felt more at home in my skating clothes anyway,” she says.

Albright said she tried to keep a low profile, but being a world-class athlete had its advantages.

“Being an Olympic figure skater opened a lot more things for me,” she says. “Some of the boys would even drive me over to the rink at four in the morning.”

Tenley E. Albright '57

Now 71 years old, Albright carries herself with the grace one would expect of a Olympic champion figure skater: her posture is perfect, and she dresses stylishly. Her memory, too, is exceptional, and she effortlessly ticks off full names of professors, classes, and classmates from her time at Radcliffe 50 years ago.

Now 71 years old, Albright carries herself with the grace one would expect of a Olympic champion figure skater: her posture is perfect, and she dresses stylishly. Her memory, too, is exceptional, and she effortlessly ticks off full names of professors, classes, and classmates from her time at Radcliffe 50 years ago.

A native of the Boston area, Albright began ice skating on frozen ponds when she was eight years old, seeing how far she could jump over the pond’s cracks. She fell in love with skating immediately.

“I always wanted to fly, and for me skating is the closest you can come to it,” Albright says. Even a bout of polio that left her isolated and immobile in the hospital for a few months when she was 10 years old didn’t stop her from skating, after she re-learned how to walk.

In addition to her Olympic gold, Albright won the U.S. Championships five times, from 1952 to 1956; was World Champion in 1953 and 1955; and won silver at the 1952 Winter Olympics.

Scott S. Hamilton, a gold medalist in men’s figure skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics, says that Albright “set a standard” for American figure skating.

As a young figure skater, Hamilton says he was subject to jitters but was reassured when he spotted Albright, who would always sit in the VIP section at skating events, a signature flower in her hair.

“I still feel so much gratitude towards her kindness to me when I was a developing skater,” he said. “It was really nice to look up and see her smiling face, and know she was rooting for me.”

Even immediately after winning the Olympic gold, however, Albright was looking past figure skating. She always knew she wanted to become a doctor and took the difficult pre-med requirements over the summer, having taken time off during the school year to compete internationally. After fulfilling her pre-med requirements, she gained acceptance to Harvard Medical School without ever finishing her undergraduate degree. Despite receiving many offers to skate professionally, with one group even offering her a white Cadillac to sweeten the deal, she turned it all down for HMS.

Albright recalls that she was one of five women in a class of 135 at HMS, and in the late 1950s, “we were still told all the usual things like ‘you realize you’re taking a place away from a deserving young man.’ We were glad to be there, but knew we had to do our best for the sake of the women who would be following us.”

Albright has spent the rest of a long and prolific professional career working in medicine, as a surgeon, a lecturer at HMS, and on numerous health industry and corporate boards. She now directs MIT’s Collaborative Initiatives, where she mediates between scholars and professionals across disciplines to study socially significant health issues such as strokes and links between childhood obesity and diabetes.

The Collaborative Initiative parallels Albright’s life, marked by success in a variety of fields.

“She’s done wholeheartedly a whole bunch of different careers at the highest level,” says Susan Whitehead, a board member at the Whitehead Institute.

In figure skating as in surgery, Albright says she has always been motivated by “the satisfaction you get from knowing you’ve done the very best you possibly can.”

“When you’ve done something, whether it’s your hobby or sport that you really love, pouring yourself into it, you learn an awful lot,” she says. “I’d like to encourage people in athletics: whathever you’re doing right now will apply to whatever you’re doing in the future.”

—Staff writer Anna L. Tong can be reached at tong@fas.harvard.edu.