page_title: History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
section_title: Co-education
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Social movements and activism (1966–1980) / Co-education
caption_attribution_description: English: Robert R Taylor, First African-American to graduate from MIT (1890) http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/timeline/taylor.html
context_page_description: The history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can be traced back to the 1861 incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History" led primarily by William Barton Rogers.
context_section_description: MIT has been nominally coeducational since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards in 1870. Female students, however, remained a tiny minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1964. Women constituted 45% of the undergraduates and 31% of the graduate students enrolled in 2013.
  Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in environmental health.
caption: Robert Robinson Taylor (Class of 1890)
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