M. Margaret Ball
M. Margaret Ball (August 29, 1909 – September 14, 1999) was an American political scientist who helped shape the study of international organizations. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949.
Ball was born in Los Angeles, California, to Mary Elizabeth (née Messerly) and Jesse W. Ball. She spent a year at Vassar College in 1928–1929, then earned her BA, MA (both in 1931) and PhD (1935) from Stanford University. Her doctoral dissertation was The Anschluss Movement, supervised by Graham Stuart. She was also a Carnegie Fellow at the University of Cologne in 1932–33, where she earned a doctor juris in 1933.
She began teaching at Vassar in 1935 and moved to Wellesley College in 1936. There she advanced from assistant professor (1938) to associate professor (1944) and to full professor (1947). In 1956 she became the Ralph Emerson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley. In 1963 she left Wellesley to become the dean of Duke University Woman’s College and associate dean of arts and sciences. She returned to full professorship in 1968 and retired as professor emeritus in 1975. Ball also served as a trustee of Wellesley College from 1966 to 1970.
Ball specialized in political history and international organization studies. Her work ranged from the politics leading to Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 to studies of international bodies such as the United Nations, NATO, and the Organization of American States. She wrote Post-War German-Austrian Relations (1937); The Problem of Inter-American Organization (1944); International Relations (1956, with Hugh B. Killough); NATO and the European Union Movement (1959); The OAS in Transition (1969); and The Open Commonwealth (1971). She was also a long-time editorial board member of the journal International Organization (1947–1956).
Ball worked for the U.S. Department of State as an international organization specialist in the 1940s and advised at the United Nations Conference on International Organization. At Wellesley she supported Carnegie Endowment for International Peace international relations clubs. In 1960 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
M. Margaret Ball died on September 14, 1999, in Durham, North Carolina.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:34 (CET).