Martha May Eliot to Head Child Health Department

Harvard's small group of women full professors has increased by 50 per cent with the appointment of Martha May Eliot as Head of the Department of Maternal and Child Health in the Faculty of Public Health.

The other two women with professorial status are Cora A. Du Bois, professor of Anthropology, and Cecilia H. Payne-Gaposchin, professor of Astronomy.

Professor Eliot, an international leader in the development of maternal and child care programs, will relinquish her post as Chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau to accept the Harvard position on Jan. 1, 1957. A graduate of Radcliffe, she has headed the Children's Bureau since 1951.

"The appointment of Dr. Eliot will add great strength to the Department of Maternal and Child Health, which has been ably headed by Dr. Harold Coe Stuart since its founding in 1927," John C. Snyder, Dean of the Faculty of Public Health, said.

"Dr. Eliot's coming will make it possible to grant Dr. Stuart's request to be relieved of administrative duties so that he may devote the major portion of his time to research," Snyder added.

Stuart will continue as a member of the Department staff and will concentrate on the completion of a child growth and development study for which he and colleagues have been accumulating data since 1930.