The AAUW Founders Distinguished Senior Scholar Award honored a woman scholar at the pinnacle of her academic career for a lifetime of outstanding research, teaching, publications, and impact on women in her profession and in the community. Effective February 2008, this award is no longer offered by AAUW.
Past Award Recipients
2007
Dr. Harriet B. Presser is the preeminent social demographer in the world today working on gender issues, in particular the intersection of gender, work, family, and fertility. Her research has been characterized as “a rare blend of high scholarship and crucial policy implications”. A highly creative scientist, she has played a key role in opening up new areas of demographic and sociological research with special relevance for women, both in national and international arenas. Dr. Presser has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of teenage fertility; the consequences of child care arrangements for children; and more recently, the impact of structural arrangements of work schedule on the functioning of families, children, and women. She has received many honors in recognition of her outstanding achievements, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002. Dr. Presser received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and was the Founding Director and leader for 15 years of the Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently the Distinguished University Professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
2006
Laurie H. Glimcher, Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She received her B.A. degree from Harvard University and M.D. from Harvard Medical School. Postdoctoral training was received at Harvard and in the Laboratory of Immunology at the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, MD. She is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology and is an Associate Rheumatologist at the Brigham and Woman’s Hospital. She has been the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Soma Weiss Award, Distinguished Young Investigator, Arthritis Foundation and FASEB Excellence in Science Award. Her laboratory uses biochemical and genetic approaches to elucidate molecular pathways that regulate CD4 T helper cell development activation. Most recently, the laboratory has expanded their interest in lineage commitment in lymphocytes to the B cell with the discovery of a transcription factor, XBP-1, that controls plasma cell differentiation and the Unfolded Protein Response. This body of work may provide a conceptual framework to therapeutically manipulate these responses in the settings of autoimmune disease, allergic and infectious diseases and cancer.
Glimcher has had an enduring commitment to the mentoring and support of women scientists, and has mentored more than two dozen women who have gone to successful careers in biomedical research in academic institutions and industry. She found the Primary Caregivers Technical Assistance Program and the National Institute of Health, a grant program to provide $50,000 in direct costs to hire technical support for postdoctoral fellows with family obligations.
2005
Madeline Caviness, Mary Richardson Professor of Art and Art History at Tufts University, is best known for her insight into medieval art history and its intersection with feminist theory. Her research has focused on constructions of gender, as evidenced by her path-breaking interpretations of medieval art and stained glass. She preserved and analyzed stained glass and was instrumental in bringing scholarly attention to the medium. She has been dedicated to empowering women both within her field and in the larger world.
Caviness has worked with numerous international organizations and served as president of the two largest U.S. medieval societies. She has written nine books and more than 70 articles, and Tufts University created a named professorship in her honor. She earned a doctorate in fine arts from Harvard University, master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Cambridge University, and an honorary doctor of letters degree from Bristol University.
2004
Virginia M.Y. Lee, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine since 1981, focuses her research on the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and other related neurodegenerative disorders of aging. Instrumental in challenging conventional ideas about the causes of age-related diseases, she has developed a controversial theory, the “tau” hypothesis. In addition to a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco, and postdoctoral studies in pharmacology at the Rudolf Magnus Institute at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and experimental neuropathology at the Children's Hospital Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, she holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Wharton School.
2002
Lillian Faderman, a scholar of international renown, gifted teacher, and author whose best-selling books have broken new ground in the area of sexuality and gender, has been professor of English at California State University, Fresno, for more than 30 years. She offered one of the first women in literature courses in the country in 1970 and the following year co-founded one of the first women’s studies programs. Her goal has been to introduce students to the writings of sexual minorities that had been either misread or suppressed. Faderman has written several books, two of which were chosen as New York Times Notable Books of the Year — Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (1981) and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (1991), which was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
2001
E. Margaret Burbidge, university professor at the University of California, San Diego, and professor emeritus of physics at the school’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences has been a pioneer in astronomy since receiving a doctorate from the University of London Observatory in 1943. Early in her career, Burbidge helped ensure that female astronomers were allowed equal use of equipment. In 1972 she became the first female director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London. Among her more than 370 publications, a paper she coauthored in 1957 formed the basis of theoretical and observational work in nucleosynthesis.
2000
Barbara T. Gates, professor of English at the University of Delaware, is a leading scholar in the fields of Victorian literature and culture. Her first book, Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories (1988), is a classic in the field. In the 1990s she explored 19th- and early 20th-century nature and science writing by women, recovering the work of an extraordinary group of talented, forgotten women. Gates taught the first women’s studies course on campus in 1971 and served as a program director of women’s studies when it became a major in 1992.
1999
Maurine H. Beasley, the first woman to achieve tenure and become full professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, is among the most respected journalism historians in the country and a revered advocate for women in journalism education. Author, editor, or coeditor of seven books, including a definitive textbook on the heritage of women in the media, Beasley has won numerous awards for her scholarship and service to women students and faculty. In 1997 the American Journalism Historians Association gave her its highest award for lifetime achievement and designated in her name an annual award for the outstanding paper on women’s history.
1998
Suzanne Juhasz, professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has forged new directions in the study of Emily Dickinson and other American women writers. Her first book, Naked and Fiery Forms: Modern American Poetry by Women, A New Tradition (1976) — a seminal work in feminist critical studies of American women’s poetry — is still quoted frequently. Her adventurous new scholarship investigates links between women’s literature and psychoanalytic theory on the development of female self-identity. She also has been distinguished as a painstaking mentor and caring colleague.
1997
Marian Diamond, professor of anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley, has lectured worldwide about her research on the human brain and its effect on aging. In 1953 she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in anatomy from the university, and in 1990 she was selected as California Professor of the Year. For six years prior to receiving this award, she has administered Berkeley’s EQUALS program, which is designed to help minority and female students better understand and appreciate the physical and computer sciences.
