Born: 2 January 1857, United States
Died: 2 December 1935
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Martha Carey Thomas, an American Educator, born at Baltimore, Md. She graduated at Cornell in 1877, and then studied at Zurich, where she was awarded Ph.D. in 1883, being the first woman to receive such a doctorate at a European university.
In 1885 she became professor of English and dean, and in 1895 president of Bryn Mawr College. She has been honored by the degree of LL.D. and in 1900 published her book Education of Women. In 1915 Mary Garrett, a benefactor of Bryn Mawr, left to President Thomas $15,000,000 to be disposed of as she saw fit.
Miss Thomas retired in 1922, after thirty-eight years’ service at Bryn Mawr.
IW note: Thomas was also overtly, publicly racist and anti-Semitic. It is also believed that she was romantically interested in women, such as Mamie Gwinn, writing of their relationship in similar terms to marriage.