Jessica Tuchman was born on July 4, 1946, to parents
Barbara Tuchman (née Wertheim) (1912–1989), historian and
Pulitzer Prize winner, and Lester Tuchman (c. 1904–1997), medical researcher and professor of clinical medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is ethnically Jewish. Her maternal grandfather was banker
Maurice Wertheim. Mathews attended
Radcliffe College (1963–1967), earning her
A.B. in 1967. She continued her education in
biochemistry and
biophysics at
California Institute of Technology (1968–1973), receiving her
doctorate in 1973. From 1977 to 1979, Mathews was director of the Office of Global Issues of the
National Security Council, covering nuclear proliferation, conventional arms sales policy,
chemical and
biological warfare, and
human rights. In 1993, she returned to government as deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs. Mathews served on the editorial board of the
Washington Post from 1980 to 1982, covering energy, environment, science, technology, arms control, health, and other issues. Later, she became a weekly columnist for the
Washington Post, writing a column that appeared nationwide and in the
International Herald Tribune. From 1993 to 1997, Mathews was a Senior Fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations and served as Director of the council's Washington program. On April 9, 1996, Mathews delivered the Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship Lecture in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium of
Kennedy Hall at
Cornell University. While at the Council on Foreign Relations in 1997 she published her article "Power Shift" in its journal,
Foreign Affairs. Her work was chosen by the journal's editors as one of the most influential pieces of writing in the publication's 75 years. From 1997 to 2015, she was President of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy think tank in
Washington, D.C. In 2012, she was elected to serve as one of 13 members of the
President and Fellows of Harvard College, the main governing board of the university, and continues to serve in this capacity. ==Family==