Charlotte Murray Curtis was the first female journalist to head the New York Times. She was born in 1928 in Columbus, Ohio

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

, attended Vassar College

Vassar College

Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

, and died of cancer in 1987. She was married to William E. Hunt, a neurosurgeon and Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

 faculty member.

She worked as a reporter and society editor for The Columbus Citizen for 11 years, and at the New York Times for 25 years. She became an op-ed editor for the Times in 1980, a position she held until shortly before her death in 1987. Journalist Emily Yoffe

Emily Yoffe

Emily Yoffe is a journalist, a regular contributor to Slate magazine and the NPR radio show Day to Day. She has also written for The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, and many other publications...

describes her as "both the first woman on the masthead of The New York Times and one of the last women to always be the only woman in the room in the world of big-time journalism", and says she was "one of those rare print journalists who are as famous as the famous people she profiled".