Clare Boothe Luce blazed many trails for women in her lifetime, as editor of Vanity Fair magazine, a front-line female European and Asian war journalist in WWII, an acclaimed author and playwright, a two-term U.S. Congresswoman, and as the first woman to be appointed U.S. Ambassador to a major nation (first Italy and then Brazil). As a journalist, she wrote extensively about the dangers posed by the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini. As a playwright, her brilliant satire came to the fore in The Women, a smash hit opening on Broadway in 1936 and later as a film. As the first woman member of Congress representing Connecticut and as a diplomat, she was recognized as a persistent and effective advocate of freedom, both home and abroad. Long before national attention focused on the dearth of women in the science, math and engineering fields, Ms. Luce was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission and later established an endowment (the Clare Boothe Luce Program) for what has become one of the single most significant sources of private support for women in science, mathematics and engineering. Thus far, the endowment has supported more than 1,900 women pursuing careers in these fields. Clare Boothe Luce was recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.
Clare Boothe Luce
