Edith Linwood Bush (1882-1977) | Gifford.
The Jackson College for Women was established in 1910 as counterpart to Tufts College. Its second dean, from 1925 to 1952, was Prof. Bush, a granddaughter of Capt. Lysander Paine, who built the house at what is now 96 Commercial Street. Bush was graduated from Tufts in 1903, while it was still coeducational. She was head of the mathematics department at Chelsea High School in Chelsea, Mass., from 1906 to 1918, and taught her younger brother, Vannevar Bush — well enough that he is remembered today as a progenitor of the internet, a father of the atomic bomb, and a pioneer in computing science. From 1918 to 1920, Bush was the principal of Provincetown High School. Then she returned to Tufts, where she was made a full professor of mathematics and head of the women’s division in 1925. She was the first woman professor to teach in the College of Engineering at Tufts. When she retired in 1952, Leonard Carmichael, the president of Tufts, said that “her concept of a coordinate college was that of an institution which combined the special advantages of a separate college for women and of the more traditional coeducational college” and that under her administration “all of the academic resources including the use of all scientific laboratories and libraries at Tufts College have been made available to Jackson College students.” Bush Hall, a dormitory at Tufts, was named in her honor in 1959. Upon her retirement, she lived in her grandfather’s house at 96 Commercial. [Lot No. 173.]
¶ Last updated on 8 January 2018.
Find a Grave Memorial No. 77680795.