Margaret E. Mahoney H ’76

It is with sadness that the class officers report the death of honorary classmate Margaret Ellerbe Mahoney, Dec. 22, 2011, after a long illness.

Margaret was raised in Nashville, and graduated from Vanderbilt University. In a career spanning more than four decades, she helped redefine and re-energize American health-care philanthropy. During the 1970s, she taught as an adjunct lecturer at Princeton while serving as vice president of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She helped to develop and teach a nontraditional course titled “Medicine and Modern Society,” as well as serving as a thesis adviser to Princeton students in the Program in Science in Human Affairs.

Margaret went on to be named the first woman to head a major U.S. philanthropic foundation, serving as president of The Commonwealth Fund from 1980 to 1995. She was a member of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine and received honorary degrees from many colleges. When she was inducted as an honorary member of ’76 in 2001, the 70 classmates who had been enrolled in her Princeton course stood in unison to honor their distinguished teacher.

We remember Margaret with affection and send sympathy to her family.