Biographies

Alice Barbara White 1891 - 1986

Alice Barbara Dale was a daughter of Alfred Dale and May Jeeves. Her father was Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and subsequently Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool University; and her grandfather was the great Victorian Congregationalist divine, R.W.Dale. She read Natural Sciences at Newnham and then went to Yale University to complete her Ph.D. Her principal scientific interest was in crystallography; but increasingly she developed interests and specialism in education. In 1934 she married the mathematician, Francis Puryer White, who was a Fellow of St John’s.

Barbara had served as Tutor of Old Hall in Newnham 1925-34 and for the duration of the Second World War was Acting Bursar. The appointment was made permanent in 1946 and she continued in the post until retirement in 1958. She then turned her energies to compiling in publishable form a register of the members of the College since its foundation and was formally made Registrar of the Roll in 1963. She served as Chairman of Governors of her old School in Cambridge, The Perse School for Girls, and on many other governing bodies and committees. And throughout her retirement she continued to do all she could to order the archives of Newnham. She and her sister Beatrice, who had also been at Newnham, were generous benefactors of the College; one of the Research Fellowships bears Beatrice’s name and the former dining hall of Old Hall is named after Barbara.

Gill Sutherland, 2004