Aurelia Henry Reinhardt

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt
Born	Aurelia Isabel Henry April 1, 1877 San Francisco, California, US
Died	January 28, 1948(1948-01-28) (aged 70) Palo Alto, California, US
Nationality	American
Education	University of California, Berkeley (1898) Ph.D., Yale University (1905)[1]
Known for	President, Mills College, 1916–1943 Moderator, American Unitarian Association, 1940–1942
Spouse	George Frederick Reinhardt
Children	G. Frederick Reinhardt, Paul Henry Reinhardt
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Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt (April 1, 1877 – January 28, 1948) was an American educator, activist, and prominent member and leader of numerous organizations. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her doctoral dissertation at Yale, and studied as a fellow at Oxford. After teaching at the University of Idaho, the Lewiston State Normal School, and with the Extension Division of the University of California, Reinhardt was elected president of Mills College in 1916, and held the position until 1943, making her the longest serving president in the history of the school.

Reinhardt was a peace activist during the First World War, an active member of the Republican Party, and supported the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles as well as the formation of the League of Nations. She wrote and spoke extensively throughout the US and Europe, to a range of social, political and business groups, on topics including the education of women, women's suffrage, world peace, and international cooperation. Reinhardt was president of the American Association of University Women, and a prominent member of the American Unitarian Association, serving for two years as its first female moderator. As the only female member of the Unitarian Commission of Appraisal, she delivered the Ware Lecture in 1932, and was briefly a minister in Oakland, California. She was a director of the Starr King School for the Ministry, and was a delegate at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations in 1945.

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt was married to George F. Reinhardt in 1909. They had two sons, who she raised after his unexpected death in 1914. Following her retirement in 1943, she traveled internationally before returning to California, where she died on January 28, 1948, due to heart problems. A lifelong advocate for the marginalized and dispossessed, she was the recipient of honorary degrees from a number of educational institutions, and has been commemorated through the establishment of a society, fellowship, a university building, and a professorship bearing her name. She was named nationally as "one of the ten outstanding women of 1940," and honored as the California State Mother in 1946.