Lamb, Helen Boyden

Helen Boyden Lamb Lamont (1906-1975), an economist (Radcliffe, A.B., 1928, Ph.D, 1943), was a research analyst for the Foreign Economic Administration of the US government and for the Center for International Studies at MIT, where she studied India's economy. Later in life she was active in civil liberties work and a leader of the anti-Vietnam War protest, as a result of which she was included on President Nixon's Enemies List of 1973. Born Helen Elizabeth Boyden, she married Robert Keen Lamb (1905-1952) in 1936; they had three sons. In 1962 she married Corliss Lamont (1902-).

Helen Elizabeth Boyden was born on May 31, 1906, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Walter Lincoln and Elizabeth Boyden. She majored in history at Radcliffe College, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1928; her senior thesis was entitled "Metics in Athens." In 1936 she married Robert Keen Lamb (1905-1952), an economist and Harvard graduate. From 1938 to 1947 the Lambs lived in Washington, D.C., where Helen (hereinafter HLL) was a research analyst for the Foreign Economic Administration, working on the U.S. Government Guide Program for the American occupation of Japan, while Robert (RKL) was a special investigator for various Congressional committees, and later a lobbyist for the United Steel Workers of America. HLL received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1943, writing an important dissertation on "Industrial Relations in the Western Lettuce Industry." In 1947 the Lambs returned to Cambridge, where HLL joined the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do research on India's economy. RKL taught in MIT's Division of Humanities and Social Sciences until his death from cancer on August 25, 1952. HLL remained in Cambridge, working at MIT and raising her three children, Robert Boyden Lamb (Robin), Roland William Boyden Lamb (Billy), and Albert Boyden Lamb (Al).

In 1962 HLL moved to New York and married Corliss Lamont (CL), author and philosopher, who had been director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1932 to 1954. About this time she became concerned with the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam and began to study the conflict there. She campaigned actively against the war, giving speeches, writing about the war from an academic viewpoint, giving money to anti-war organizations, participating in demonstrations and marches -- and was thus instrumental in bringing the war to the attention of the American public. Her efforts were notable enough to earn her a place on President Nixon's Enemies' List of 1973. She died in New York City on July 21, 1975.