Mary Haas
Mary Haas was born in Richmond Indiana in 1910 and attended Earlham College as an undergraduate before studying at Yale. She received her PhD in 1935 for a dissertation entitled "A Grammar of the Tunica Language", and then stayed at Yale where she continued to work in the Department of Anthropology.
Haas conducted fieldwork with the last speakers of Natchez (Oklahoma), before doing important fieldwork on the Creek language (Florida).
Haas also became an expert in Thai, which she taught to troops during WWII at the Army Specialized Training Program at Berkeley. She was appointed professor of linguistics at Berkeley in 1947, a position she held until 1957, and was instrumental in the establishment of the UC Language Lab during her tenure.
Haas chaired the Berkeley Anthropology Department from 1958-1964. She was the recipient of honorary doctorates from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Earlham College, and Ohio State University, and she served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1963.
[ source: www.nap.edu/html/biomems/mhaas.html ]
