Helen Maud Cam, was an English historian of the Middle Ages, and the first woman to be appointed a tenured professor at Harvard University.
Occupation
historian
Born
August 22, 1885
Died
February 9, 1968
Overview
Helen Maud Cam, (22 August 1885 – 9 February 1968) was an English historian of the Middle Ages, and the first woman to be appointed a tenured professor at Harvard University.
Life and career
Cam was born at Abingdon, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). Educated at home by her father William Herbert Cam, the headmaster of Abingdon School, she did her undergraduate degree at Royal Holloway College gaining a First in History there, and later an MA in Anglo-Saxon and Frankish studies at the University of London, after a fellowship year at Bryn Mawr College This degree led to her first book, Local Government in Francia and England, 768–1034 (1912).
After teaching at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Royal Holloway, she became a fellow of Girton College, Cambridge in 1921. In 1948 she took up the Zemurray Radcliffe Professorship at Harvard, a position she held until her retirement in 1954.
In 1949 she became, as the successor to François Olivier-Martin (1879–1952), the president of the International Commission for the History of Assemblies of Estates. She retired as president in 1960.
