Born on September 23, 1839, in Newark, New Jersey, Helen Shafer grew up there and later in Oberlin, Ohio. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1863. After two years of teaching in New Jersey she joined the faculty of St. Louis High School, where her work as a teacher of mathematics attracted the favorable notice of the superintendent of St. Louis schools, William Torrey Harris, later U.S. commissioner of education. In 1877 she was given the chair of mathematics at the two-year-old Wellesley College.
Her work in establishing high standards in mathematics at Wellesley was widely noted, and the quality of work done by her students was generally held to be higher than that of students at Harvard. In 1888 she succeeded Alice E. F. Palmer as president of Wellesley. Under her administration the college╒s curriculum was reorganized and considerably broadened, and the elective system that was long to remain in effect with few modifications was introduced. She also oversaw a liberalization of the social life of the college. Her work at Wellesley was cut short by tuberculosis; she died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on January 20, 1894.
