Annie Nathan Meyer

Annie Nathan Meyer (February 19, 1867 – September 23, 1951) was an American author and promoter of the higher education of women.

Born in New York City,the daughter of Annie August and Robert Weeks Nathan, the Nathans are of America's colonial era Sephardic families. She married Alfred Meyer, a prominent physician and a cousin.

Within weeks of her wedding, Meyer began organizing a committee to found a women's college at Columbia and provide for young women the opportunity for an education that she herself had not enjoyed. Meyer understood that the idea was nothing without funding, and created a committee of fifty prominent New Yorkers to willing to support the projected college. She overcame the opposition of the Columbia trustees with a brilliant maneuver: she named the college after F.A.P. Barnard, Columbia's recently deceased president. The college Meyer founded, Barnard College, is (one of the Seven Sisters) and ranks today as one of America's most elite colleges.

She became known as an opponent of woman suffrage (in direct conflict to her sister Maud Nathan). At one time, Annie Nathan Meyer was associate editor of the "Broadway Magazine". She edited "Woman's Work in America" (1891) and contributed a series of articles to the New York "Evening Post".

Her sister was the activist Maud Nathan and her nephew the author and poet Robert Nathan.

Books

* "Barnard Beginnings" (1935)
* "Helen Brent, M. D." (1892)
* "My Park Book" (1898)
* "Robert Annys: A Poor Priest" (1901)
* "The Dominant Sex" (1911)
* "The Dreamer; a Play in Three Acts" (1912)
* "Women's Work in America" (1891)
* "It's Been Fun: An Autobiography" (1951)

Biography

* Three Outstanding Women: Mary Fels, Rebekah Kohut [and] Annie Nathan Meyer, by Dora Askowith (1941)
* Annie Nathan Meyer: Barnard Godmother and Gotham Gadfly, by Myrna Gallant Goldenberg (1987)

External links

* [http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FindingAids/Meyer.htm Annie Nathan Meyer Papers]

References