Portrait of Drew Gilpin Faust

Birthday profile

Drew Gilpin Faust

Drew Gilpin Faust, American historian and academic

Born
September 18, 1947
Age in 2026
79
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1947

About Drew Gilpin Faust

Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947) is an American historian and author who served as the 28th president of Harvard University from 2007 to 2018. She was Harvard's first female president, its first president since 1672 without a Harvard undergraduate or graduate degree, and the first to have been raised in the South. Faust was also the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was repeatedly named one of the world's 100 most powerful women by Forbes, reaching as high as 33rd in 2014. == Early life and education == Drew Gilpin was born in New York City and raised in Clarke County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. She is the daughter of Catharine Ginna (née Mellick) and McGhee Tyson Gilpin. Her father was a Princeton graduate and bred thoroughbred horses, among other business ventures. Her paternal grandfather, Kenneth Newcomer Gilpin, was a businessman who served in the Virginia House of Delegates (representing Clarke and adjacent Warren Counties) and was an aviator in both World War I and World War II. Her paternal great-grandfather, General Lawrence Tyson, was a U.S. senator from Tennessee during the 1920s. Faust also has New England ancestry and is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton. Faust went to New England to attend Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1964.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Drew Gilpin Faust timeline

  1. She followed that with Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (1996), for which she won the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize and the Avery O.
  2. In 2001, Faust was appointed the first dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which was established after the merger of Radcliffe College with Harvard University.

The world when Drew Gilpin Faust was born

Drew Gilpin Faust was born in 1947. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1947

  • #1 song"Near You" – Francis Craig
  • Top movieMiracle on 34th Street
  • Top TV showHowdy Doody
  • Best-selling bookThe Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJackie Robinson breaks baseball's color barrier
  • Top headlineJackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball's color barrier
  • Technology milestoneTransistor invented at Bell Labs
  • Defining fadFlying saucer mania
  • Notable inventionPolaroid instant camera
  • World population2.47 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHarry S. Truman
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • Also wonPhiladelphia Warriors (BAA)
  • U.S. population144.1M

1947 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Drew Gilpin Faust's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19472026
Gas$0.23$3.45/gal
Average home$7,800$435,000
Average income$4,700$67,500
Minimum wage$0.40$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.40$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population144.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.