Memories of Princeton Before Coeducation

I entered Princeton grad school in the fall of '62, in chemistry. We had been married for a year, coming from the Univ. of Minnesota, a huge state university, so the Princeton experience was quite different. I was a TA for a section in an Orgo lab and I was negatively impressed with most of the Princeton undergrads, great students but with a distorted social life. When high heels were heard clicking in the terra-cotta floor outside the lab in old Frick, all heads turned from their work, including mine. As a happily married man, I was embarrassed by my response and told my wife when I got home, "When we have kids, they'll be coeducated." We had two and they were, all the way through to college and grad school. I left before the admission of women, but we cheered it on from afar.

I was unaware that the first woman grad was in *63; I never encountered her. We did have two women first-year chemistry grad students, '63-'64, who came down with Kurt Mislow's group from NYU. However, they left after that one year. A few years ago when I recounted this, the undergrad who followed one of the women to Penn, married her, and he said they still ran a research group together. However, I lost contact with them, so if you're reading, please contact me again (buntrock16@roadrunner.com).