October 24, 1974

Historian Stephan Thernstrom, professor of history at Harvard University, gave the first C. Mildred Thompson Lecture of the academic year on “History as Social Science.” A student of social mobility and a winner of the 1974 Bancroft Prize in American History for The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metrolpolis, 1880-1970, Professor Thernstrom edited The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980).

The Thompson lectureship, given by an anonymous donor, honored American historian C. Mildred Thompson ’03, who taught in the history department from 1910 until 1923, when she became Vassar’s dean, a position she held until her retirement in 1948. Dean Thompson died in 1975.