Ex-Prof. Rice, 95, Dies

Hizabeth Prince Rice, associate professor emeritus of public health social work at the School of Public Health, died on September 4 at her home in Bridgeport, Conn. She was 95.

Rice retired from Harvard in 1967 after serving for 19 years as a Harvard faculty member. She was the first social worker to join a school of public health in the United States.

Born in Brighton, Mass., the daughter of the late Dr. Frederick W. Rice, a general practitioner, Rice considered following in her father's footsteps as a doctor.

After graduating from Wellesley college in 1921 she chose instead to pursue a master's degree in sociology at Simmons College in Boston. Rice then spent the next 44 years as a social worker.

Rice joined the School of Public Health faculty as an assistant professor of Medical Social Work in 1948.

In an interview for the Sunday Herald Tribune that ran on January 15, 1967, Rice said of the evolution of social work that "social work really developed as a practice for the poor. The social worker was only for the ward patients in the begging."

"But we came to realize that others had problems too," she continued, referring to cases of emotional problems encountered by middle or upper-class children sent to camp in the summer and boarding school all winter. "These are problems of the privileged that the underprivileged don't have."

Rice was once described in a newspaper article as having a "personality and fresh approach [that] helped change the image of the social worker from battle-ax to friend and helper."

She leaves no immediate survivors.