IT is a delicious irony unlikely to be lost on Larry Summers, who resigned as President of Harvard last year after suggesting that women were innately inferior to men when it came to maths and science.

His replacement may be female — and just to rub it in, a female scientist.

America’s oldest university is abuzz with rumour that it is about to name the first woman president in its 317-year history. If so, the move would not only be a poke in the eye for Dr Summers, but would also add to the growing list of female firsts in America this year.

Nancy Pelosi was elected the first female Speaker of the House last week, while Hillary Clinton is widely expected to announce her intention to become the first female president of the United States.

A list of potential candidates includes seven women, according to the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. Among them are Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University in the UK; Ruth Simmons, head of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania; and Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist and President of Princeton.

Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Harvard Crimson: “If people said that’s a corrective action for what the previous president did, I think that would be unfair to women.”

She also said that a female president may not necessarily advance the cause of women in academia. “Some women don’t really understand the issue that well,” she said. “Some women are afraid to promote other women. A man could be as effective as a woman.”

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