Undergraduate Physics Education at Radcliffe and Harvard 1895-1953

The effort to get more women to continue in physics is ongoing and many hypotheses exist as to why the gender ratio lags more in physics than in other fields. A historical investigation can offer insights to the origin of this persistent problem. Radcliffe College offered to female students an education supposedly equivalent to that offered to male students at Harvard. I track physics classes at Radcliffe and Harvard from Radcliffe's charter year to the year the physics classes fully merged. Data on instructors, enrollment, and later employment offers insights to trends in physics education over time and how the genders were affected differently even when multiple variables are isolated across the two single-gender groups.