Caroline F. Ware, 90, a former professor of social work and history at Howard University and a former United Nations technical advisor, died on April 5.

Dr. Ware, a native of Brookline, MA, graduated from Vassar College and received master's and doctoral degrees in history from Harvard University.

After nine years as a history professor at Vassar, she came to the Washington area in 1934. She taught social work at American University from 1935 to 1944.

During that time she also worked in the consumer divisions at the National Emergency Council and the Office of Price Administration.

She was on the faculty of the Howard University School of Social Work from 1945 to 1961. Between 1962 and 1976, she was a technical advisor in community development and cultural affairs for the United Nations with missions in Central and South America.

Dr. Ware wrote several sociological books, including Early New England Cotton Manufacture and A Cultural Approach to History. She was author and editor for UNESCO's six-volume History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind.

She was a member of the Washington Urban League, the American Historical Association, and the National Association of Social Workers. She received the Urban League's community service award in 1974 and the National Consumer League's Trumpeter award in 1978.

In 1988 Dr. Ware donated her 70-acre farm and apple orchard, worth over two million dollars, to the Northern Virginia Park Authority, which now operates the Meadowlark Gardens Regional Park on the site.

Dr. Ware leaves no immediate survivors. Her husband, Gardiner C. Means, died in 1988.