The Senior Celebrants of 2009

Harvard’s most venerable alumni

Frances Pass Addelson

Frances Pass Addelson | Photograph by Stu Rosner

The oldest graduates of Harvard and Radcliffe present on Commencement day were Frances Pass Addelson ’30, 100, of Brookline, Massachusetts, and George Barner ’29, Ed ’32, L ’33, 100, of Kennebunk, Maine. Both were recognized at the afternoon ceremony by HAA president Walter H. Morris Jr. 

Photograph by Stu Rosner

George Barner

According to University records, the oldest alumni include: M. Louise Macnair ’25, 106, of Cambridge; Halford J. Pope ’25, M.B.A. ’27, 105, of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; Edward Gipstein ’27, 104, of New London, Connecticut; Rose Depoyan ’26, Ed.M. ’38, 103, of Brockton, Massachusetts; Edith M. Van Saun ’29, 102, of Sykesville, Maryland; Amelia T. Rieman ’29, 102, of Tucson, Arizona; Priscilla Bartol Grace ’58, 102, of Woods Hole, Massachusetts; George H. O’Sullivan ’30, 101, of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts; Ruth Smith ’29, 101, of New York City; and J. Mack Swigert ’30, 101, of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Related topics

You might also like

Plus, veteran higher education leader Thomas Ehrlich reflects on university curricula for his 70th reunion

Derek Bok donated his car for a good cause.

The play Spare Parts is a contemporary fable about the quest to live forever.

Most popular

In 2004, a frenzy spread across Harvard Yard in days. Four billion users later, we are only just catching up.

All That’s Unseen charts the Harvard graduate’s uneasy journey from Appalachia to Cambridge and back.  

Alexander Pascal, the executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, says governments should not passively accept that AI is inevitable.

Explore More From Current Issue

Portrait of a man in a denim shirt beside a blue book cover for "Gretal and the Great War" featuring an illustration of a leg holding an army helmet..

The Gretel and the Great War author on how the Lampoon derailed his science career—and set him on a literary path.

A glowing bulb shape surrounded by colorful, swirling energy lines against a blue background.

Harvard researchers achieve medical breakthroughs in cancer therapy and infection control.

Two laboratory researchers, one seated and one standing, in a scientific lab with equipment.

The stakes are high for this husband and wife: one of them will die if they don’t find a cure.