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Helen Wills Moody (October 6, 1905 – January
1, 1998) was one of the greatest women's tennis
players of all time, dominating the 1920s and
1930s. She won 31 major titles (singles, doubles,
and mixed doubles) over her career, including
seven U.S. Open (tennis)|U.S. singles
championships (1923-25, 1927-29, and 1931), eight
Wimbledon championships|Wimbledon singles titles
(1927-30, 1932-33, 1935, and 1938), and four
French Open|French singles titles (1928-30 and
1932). She also won two Olympic Games|Olympic gold
medals in Paris in 1924 (singles and doubles), the
last year tennis was an Olympic sport until 1988.
She was the U.S. girls' singles champion 1921-22.
She won her first women's national title at the
age of 17 (1923), making her the youngest champion
at that time. She won the finals of her first 16
major titles in straight sets. Between 1919 and
1938 she amassed a 398-35 match record, including
a 158-match winning streak (1927-32), during which
she did not lose a single set. She was a member of
the U.S. Wightman Cup team 1923-25, 1927-32, and
1938. Her unchanging expression earned her the
nickname "Little Miss Poker Face". She helped free
women tennis players from ankle-length skirts and
petticoats, typically wearing a white sailor suit
having a pleated knee-length skirt, white shoes,
and a white visor. She was named Associated Press
Athlete of the Year|Associated Press Female
Athlete of the Year in 1935, and was inducted into
the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1969. She
wrote a coaching manual, Tennis (1928), her
autobiography, Fifteen-Thirty: The Story of a
Tennis Player (1937), and a mystery, Death Serves
an Ace (1939, with Robert Murphy). 

She graduated from the University of California,
Berkeley with a degree in Fine Arts in 1927. In
Berkeley she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She
painted all her life, giving exhibitions of her
paintings and etchings in New York galleries. She
was born Helen Newington Wills, but married
Frederick Moody in December 1929, giving her the
name by which she is most well known. She divorced
Moody in 1937 and married Aidan Roark in October
1939.

In 1998 Helen Wills bequeathed US$10 million to
the University of California - Berkeley to fund
the establishment of a Neuroscience institute. The
resulting institute, the Helen Wills Neuroscience
Institute began in 1999 and is now home to over 40
faculty researchers.

==External links==
*http://www.tennisfame.org/enshrinees/helen_moodyr
oark.html Bio from the International Tennis Hall
of Fame
*http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday
/bday/1006.html New York Times Obituary
*http://search.eb.com/women/articles/Wills_Helen_N
ewington.html Women in American History by
Encyclopaedia Britannica
*http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu Helen Wills
Neuroscience Institute


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