Christine Ladd-Franklin

Christine Ladd, sometimes known by her nickname "Kitty,"[1] was born on December 1, 1847 in Windsor, Connecticut to Eliphalet, a merchant, and Augusta (née Niles) Ladd. During her early childhood, she lived with her parents and younger brother Henry (born 1850) in New York City.[2] In 1853 the family moved back to Windsor, Connecticut where her sister Jane Augusta Ladd McCordia was born the following year. Family correspondence shows that Augusta and one of her sisters were both staunch supporters of women's rights. Even before Ladd had celebrated her fifth birthday, her mother had taken her to a lecture given by Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a well-known proponent of women's rights. Additionally, her father was a graduate professor who was supportive of his eldest daughter's education.[3]

Following the death of her mother in spring 1860 of pneumonia, Ladd went to live with her paternal grandmother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where she attended school.[2] Ladd's father remarried in 1862 and there were two further children, her half-sister Katherine (born 1862) and half-brother George (born 1867).[2] Ladd was a precocious child who sought to find "a mean to continue her education beyond secondary school."[2] Her father enrolled her in a two-year program at the coeducational Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts; she took the same courses that prepared boys for entrance to colleges such as Harvard.[4]

In 1865 Ladd graduated as valedictorian from Wesleyan Academy and pursued further education at Vassar College,[1] supported by her family.[3]

In the fall of 1866 Ladd enrolled in Vassar College financed by a loan from her aunt, Juliet Niles[1], but left at the end of the spring term due to lack of money.[4] Ladd then worked as a public school teacher until her aunt's aid allowed her to re-enter Vassar and graduate with an A. B. degree in 1869. While there, Ladd began working under the mentorship of astronomy professor, Maria Mitchell, who was famous for having been "the first woman to discover a new comet, using a telescope, in 1847"[5] Mitchell was also a suffragette and strove to inspire women to gain more self-confidence in order to succeed in the male-dominated academia of the time. Under the guidance of Mitchell, Ladd became proficient and developed a love for physics and mathematics.[6] Since women in nineteenth century America were not allowed in physics laboratories, Ladd chose to study mathematics.[5] Later in her life, Ladd would reflect on her decision and say, "had it not been for the impossibility, in those days, in the case of women, of obtaining access to laboratory facilities" she would have eagerly gone on to study physics.[5]

In 1887 Vassar College awarded Ladd an honorary LL.D..[7]

After graduating, Ladd taught science and mathematics at secondary level in Washington, Pennsylvania, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York for nine years,[7] although her diary entries indicate that her interest in teaching dimished over time.[1] During this time, she contributed seventy-seven mathematical problems and solutions to the Educational Times of London. She also published six items in The Analyst: A Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and three in the American Journal of Mathematics.[4]

Christine Ladd-Franklin

In 1878, Ladd was accepted into Johns Hopkins University with the help of James J. Sylvester, an English mathematician among the University's faculty who remembered some of Ladd's earlier works in the Educational Times.[4] Ladd's application for a fellowship was signed "C. Ladd", and the University offered it to her without realizing she was a woman.[8] When they did realize this, the board tried to revoke the offer, but Sylvester insisted that Ladd should be his student, and so she was.[8] She held a fellowship at John Hopkins University for three years, but the trustees did not allow her name to be printed in circulars with those of other fellows, for fear of setting a precedent.[8] Furthermore, dissension over her continued presence forced one of the original trustees to resign.[8]

Since the university did not approve of coeducation, at first Ladd was only allowed to attend classes taught by Sylvester. However, after displaying exceptional work in his courses, Ladd was allowed to take courses with additional professors. Even though she was awarded a stipend, she was not allowed to have the title of 'Fellow'.[1] During 1879–1880, Ladd took classes taught by Charles Sanders Peirce, who has been called the first American experimental psychologist.[4] She wrote a dissertation "On the Algebra of Logic" with Peirce as her thesis advisor. The dissertation was published in Studies in Logic (S. C. Peirce, ed.) in 1883. In 1884 Ladd attended Kelvin's master class and met her future husband, Fabian Franklin.

Due to her studies with Sylvester and Peirce, Ladd became the first American woman to formally receive graduate instruction in both mathematics and symbolic logic.[5] Since women were not allowed to graduate from John Hopkins University at that time, Ladd was refused a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Logic, although she was the first woman to complete all the University's requirements for a PhD. The University eventually officially awarded her a Ph.D. during its 50th anniversary celebrations in 1926[9] (44 years after she had earned it) when she was seventy-eight.[4]

In 1893 she sought a teaching position at Johns Hopkins University but was denied. Despite this setback, she remained persistent and determined.[1] Laurel Furumoto, in his work discussing the sociopolitical environment of the time, notes that Ladd's "inability to secure a regular academic position was a predictable consequence, in that time period, of her decision to marry."[10] Eleven years later, in 1904, she was at last given permission to teach one class per year. For the next five years her position at Johns Hopkins University had to be approved and renewed on a yearly basis. Women who were fortunate enough to obtain academic positions in universities at this time often chose these positions despite their lack of compensation. Ladd was no different. Many of the teaching positions that she held were on a volunteer basis, creating substantial financial strain on her and her family. Yet, it is evident that Ladd placed a high value on her ability to earn the academic affiliations necessary to become a successful contributor to her field.[1]

After marriage to Fabian Franklin on August 24, 1882[1], she adopted the name Christine Ladd-Franklin. The couple had two children, one of whom died in infancy. The other, Margaret Ladd-Franklin, became a prominent member in the women's suffrage movement.[4] Ladd-Franklin often wrote of the injustice she observed in the oppression of the female sex. In one such journal entry while at Vassar College she describes her disappointment with the views in society about and among women, stating, "I so despise the idea that woman are not as competent to take care of themselves as men, that they cannot decide for themselves when to go to bed and when to get up, how much exercise to take, how much to pray and go to church. Still my greatest objection is to the class of girls who come here and to the social and political atmosphere of the place...I know of but one girl who declares herself for the rights of women" (September 22, 1866).[7] In another journal entry she writes about the lack of recognition of women who have earned advanced educational degrees, "That is the case with our clever girls -- they go to Germany and get the parchments, beautifully signed and sealed, that proclaim them to be doctors of philosophy, but no further consequences follow. They have nothing but the empty satisfaction of exhibiting their 'tickets'".[7]

She died on March 5, 1930 in New York, New York.[4]

After leaving Hopkins, Ladd-Franklin worked with German psychologist G. E. Müller, where she carried out experimental work on vision. Although women in academic settings and laboratories were viewed as equally unwelcome as in the United States, she managed to secure a position.[7] Ladd-Franklin was also able to work in the laboratory of Hermann von Helmholtz, where she attended his lectures on theory of color vision. After attending these lectures, Ladd-Franklin developed her own theory of color vision.[4] In 1929 she published Color and Color Theories.

• "Quaternions", The Analyst v. 4, n. 6, pp. 172–4 (Nov 1877). Google Books The Analyst p. 172 in n. 6 (November) in v. 4 (1877). Also JSTOR "Quaternions" first page.  (Several journals have been called "The Analyst". See The Analyst (disambiguation). Internet searches for The Analyst, the one which became The Annals of Mathematics, should use the search phrase "The Analyst" mathematics, otherwise The Analyst about chemistry will dominate search results.)
• "On the Algebra of Logic" in Studies in Logic, C. S. Peirce, ed., pp. 17–71, 1883. Google Books Eprint. Internet Archive Eprint.
• "A Method for the Experimental Determination of the Horopter" in the American Journal of Psychology, v. 1, n. 1 pp. 99–111, November 1887. JSTOR .
• "On Some Characteristics of Symbolic Logic" in the American Journal of Psychology, v. 2, n. 4, pp. 543–567, August 1889. Google Books Eprint. Internet Archive Eprint.
• "Epistemology for the logician" in Verhandlungen des III. Internationalen Kongresses fur Philosophie., pp. 64–670, 1908. Also separately as an offprint.
• "Charles Peirce at the Johns Hopkins", The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods v. 13, n. 26, 715–723, December 1916. Google Books Eprint (badly done) and seek the text.
• "The Reddish Blue Arcs and the Reddish Blue Glow of the Retina; an Emanation from Stimulated Nerve Fibre." in VIIIth International Congress of Psychology: Proceedings and Papers, 1926.
• Colour and Colour Theories, Routledge, 320 pages, 1929.

• Timeline of women in science

• Furumoto, Laurel (1992). "Joining Separate Spheres: Christine Ladd-Franklin, Woman-Scientist (1847–1930)". American Psychologist. 47 (2): 175–182. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.47.2.175.
• Furumoto, L (December 1994). "Christine Ladd-Franklin's color theory: strategy for claiming scientific authority?". Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. UNITED STATES. 727 (1 Aspects of th): 91–100. Bibcode:1994NYASA.727...91F. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1994.tb27502.x. PMID 7857009. S2CID 39782612.
• Hurvich, Dorothea Jameson (1975), "Ladd-Franklin, Christine" Notable American Women, Vol. 2, 4th ed., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Nubiola, Jaime and Cobo, Jesús (2000), "The Spanish Mathematician Ventura Reyes Prósper and His Connections with Charles S. Peirce and Christine Ladd-Franklin", Arisbe, Lubbock, TX. Eprint. Includes an English translation "Christine Ladd Franklin: American Mathematician and her influence on symbolic logic" of the paper "Cristina Ladd Franklin. Matemática americana y su influencia en la lógica simbólica" by Prósper published in El Progreso Matemático, 12 (1891), 297–300.
• Spillman, Scott, "Institutional Limits: Christine Ladd-Franklin, Fellowships, and American Women's Academic Careers, 1880–1920," History of Education Quarterly 52 (May 2012), 196–221.
• Notable Women in Mathematics, a Biographical Dictionary, edited by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, Greenwood Press, 1998. pp 107–113
• Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne (2008). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics — The Pre-1940 PhD's. History of Mathematics. 34 (1st ed.). American Mathematical Society, The London Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-4376-5. Biography on p. 338-346 of the Supplementary Material at AMS</ref>

This article incorporates material from Christine Ladd-Franklin on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• The Christine Ladd-Franklin Diary 1866–1873
• Vaughn, Kelli (2010) Profile of Christine Ladd-Franklin. In A. Rutherford (Ed.), Psychology's Feminist Voices Multimedia Internet Archive
• Christine Ladd Franklin's 1921 letter to The New York Times about the lack of women in the American Academy of Arts and Letters