Dr Anna Bidder remembered

There will be a Ceremony of Thanksgiving for the life of Anna Bidder, Co-founder, First President and Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, on Saturday 24 November.

Dr Lindsey Traub, Vice-president of Lucy Cavendish College, here pays tribute to this remarkable woman.

Dr Anna Bidder - a woman of her century

4 May 1903 - 1 October 2001
First President of Lucy Cavendish College

Fifty-one years ago, three academic women friends lunching together in Cambridge realised that they were "the kind of people" who might found a new college. Anna Bidder, a marine biologist, was one of them and later recalled: "feeling very daring, we ordered three glasses of wine and drank to the idea". In 1950 it was a daring idea - women had only been admitted to full membership of the University two years before, in 1947-1948 - but it became reality as Lucy Cavendish College and she became its first President.

Born in 1903 to Marion Greenwood Bidder (a botanist and physiologist) and Dr George Parker Bidder (a marine biologist), Anna was educated at the Perse School for Girls Cambridge, followed by a year at University College London in 1921 and Newnham College, Cambridge where she graduated in Natural Sciences (Zoology) in 1926.

Her research career began at the University of Basel, Switzerland from 1926-1928 and continued in Cambridge from 1928, her PhD on the functional morphology of cephalopods (squids and octopuses) being completed in 1934. Teaching for Newnham College and in the University Department of Zoology, her students remember being inspired as she "revelled in the animal world". In 1960 she was awarded a Nuffield grant for a pioneering study of the pearly nautilus in the Western Pacific and published a paper in Nature in 1962 on this then little-known animal.

Always delighted by the beauty of the marine world, Anna was to see the spiral shell of the nautilus crowning the coat of arms of the college she helped to found.

Meanwhile in Cambridge, although there were already at least two women Professors and 20 University Lecturers, women at all academic levels were confined to two colleges, Newnham and Girton until the growth of New Hall in the late 50s . Thus a large number of academic women teaching and researching in the University were without proper appointments, let alone college fellowships and frequently interrupted in their careers by family commitments.

Anna Bidder, with Margaret Braithwaite (a philosopher) and Kay Wood-Legh (a medieval historian) the three members of the 1950 lunch group, continued to encourage women academics in this situation through the formation of a Dining Group. This grew in size and influence until it became recognised as an Approved Society of the University in 1965, the Lucy Cavendish Collegiate Society.

With Anna Bidder as its first President, this was the start of a long, arduous and exciting project, marked by hard unpaid work, sacrifice and sheer daring within the group and generosity as well as discouragement from without. The first students were post-graduates but after 1972 the college was granted permission to take undergraduates and its unique contribution to Cambridge began: the admission of mature women students to read for first degrees.

The embryo grew until, in 1997, with nearly 40 fellows and over 200 students, it was granted its Royal Charter as a full college of the University. In her 95th year, Anna Bidder rose to address assembled members and friends with characteristic clarity and vigour - fittingly it was the centenary of the University's most notorious refusal to admit women and the 50th anniversary of awarding them degrees. They had indeed founded a College.

Recognition for Anna Bidder as a scientist continued throughout her life with service on the Councils of the Marine Biological Association, the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Linnean Society, which made her a Fellow Honoris Causa in 1991, when she was 88.

But her great fund of energy and powerful sense of social responsibility, which led her in many directions and earned lifelong friendships, was rooted in her faith as an active member of the Society of Friends. She thought and spoke with rigorous clarity and honesty and her book, 'The Quaker view of sex' was admired for its frankness and compassion.

Her wit sprang from her enjoyment of nice distinctions and verbal inventions, which never left her. Two days before her death, when injury from a fall left her physically diminished but undimmed, she paused thoughtfully when asked whether she was in pain. Then she smiled impishly but reassuringly: 'No lovie; it's tiresome, but not severe'.

Anna Bidder would have liked to reach her 100th birthday, but she was nonetheless in every way and unforgettably, a woman of her century.

Dr. Lindsey Traub
Vice-president, Lucy Cavendish College

Tea will be served afterwards and gowns will be worn. People wishing to attend should inform the College, as seating is limited.

A Memorial Fund has been established - contributions to the fund should be made payable to 'Lucy Cavendish College' (please add 'Anna Bidder Memorial Fund' on reverse of cheques and address to:
President's Secretary
Lucy Cavendish College
Lady Margaret Road
Cambridge CB3 0BU