Eleanor Lansing Dulles (June 1, 1895 – October 30, 1996) was an American writer, professor, and United States government employee.

Her background in economics and her familiarity with European affairs enabled her to fill a number of important State Department positions.

She returned to the U.S. for a radical change of pace, taking odd jobs in the real world including running a punch press at the American Tube and Stamping Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and working as a payroll clerk for a hair-net company in Long Island City, Queens, New York.

For the next ten years she taught economics at various colleges, including Simmons, Bryn Mawr, and the University of Pennsylvania.

As a student and college professor she made frequent trips to Europe to study and conduct research on European financial matters.

After the end of World War II, in the spring of 1945 she went to Europe, where she became involved in the reconstruction of the Austrian economy as the U.S. Financial Attaché in Austria.

The Berlin Congress Hall, the U.S. contribution to the International Building Exhibition was nicknamed the Dulleseum (Dulles plus Museum) for the role of Eleanor and her brother John Foster in its financing and construction.

But it is fun to see how far you can get in spite of being a woman.In 1959, Dulles transferred from the German Desk to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where she became involved in a study of economic conditions in underdeveloped countries.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk requested her resignation on September 21, 1961, at the insistence of the Kennedy Administration following the April Bay of Pigs Invasion, a foreign relations disaster for the U.S. that her brother Allen had overseen as head of the CIA.

[9] She wrote a study of Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles that found commonality in their approaches to deterrence.

In 1993, Dulles donated a collection of her documents to the Mount Vernon College for Women, which merged with the George Washington University in 1999.

It is currently cared for by GWU's Special Collections Research Center, located in the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library.

[4][16] Dulles died on October 30, 1996, aged 101, in a retirement home in Washington, D.C.,[4] and was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery there.

[18] Dulles maintained a summer residence there as an adult[19] and in 1963 publicly campaigned against the construction of large cement plant that would endanger the ecological beauty and serenity of the area.