May 20, 1922

President MacCracken unveiled a bust of Maria Mitchell at New York University’s Hall of Fame of Great Americans. Mitchell had been selected in 1905, along with Mary Lyon and Emma Willard, as one of the first women to be so honored. Other busts unveiled were those of two of the original designees in 1900, George Washington and Gilbert Stuart, one of the 1910 group, Edgar Allen Poe, and one from 1915, Mark Hopkins.

“Maria Mitchell had,” MacCracken said, “a rare combination of an enthusiasm for research as well in the in the inner mind and heart of immature pupils as in the remote spaces of the firmament. True teacher that she was, her spirit irked at the inevitable restrictions of marks and grades, semesters and requirements….”

The Mitchell bust, a replica of the 1877 work by Emma F. Brigham, was the gift of Maria Mitchell’s nephew, William Mitchell Kendall.

Annual Report of the Maria Mitchell Association (1923), The New York Times