After teaching at Northwestern University (1951–52), Princeton University (1953–61), and MIT (1961–65), Putnam moved to Harvard in 1965. His wife, the philosopher Ruth Anna Putnam, took a teaching position in philosophy at Wellesley College. Hilary and Ruth Anna were married on August 11, 1962. Ruth Anna, descendant of a family with a long scholarly tradition in Gotha (her ancestor was the German classical scholar Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs), was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1927 to anti-Nazi activist parents and, like Putnam, was raised atheist (her mother was Jewish and her father from a Christian background). The Putnams, rebelling against the antisemitism they experienced during their youth, decided to establish a traditional Jewish home for their children. Since they had no experience with the rituals of Judaism, they sought out invitations to other Jews' homes for Seder. They had "no idea how to do it ", in Ruth Anna's words. They began to study Jewish ritual and Hebrew, and became more Jewishly interested, identified, and active. In 1994, Hilary Putnam celebrated a belated Bar Mitzvah service. His wife had a Bat Mitzvah service four years later.