Christine Ladd-Franklin

Christine Ladd-Franklin (born December 1, 1847 in Windsor (Connecticut) , † March 5, 1930 in New York City ) was an American mathematician ( logic ) and psychologist . She is considered to be the first woman in the USA who achieved all the formal requirements for a doctorate in mathematics (1883), although her doctorate was not formally recognized until 1926, 43 years later.

Scientific career

education

Ladd-Franklin studied languages and physics at Vassar College , where she graduated in 1869. After that she worked, since she could not make a career in physics at the time, as a mathematics teacher in Pennsylvania and New York and at the same time published mathematical works for example in the British Educational Times and in The Analyst . She also took private lessons at Harvard from mathematicians William Elwood Byerly and James Mills Peirce. In 1878, thanks to the intercession of James Joseph Sylvester , who knew her essays, she was able to study at Johns Hopkins University in the Graduate Program (i.e. with the aim of obtaining a doctorate). In 1883 she completed her studies with a doctoral thesis in logic with Charles Sanders Peirce . However, she did not receive her formal doctorate degree until 1926, as women at the time were unable to do a doctorate at Johns Hopkins. She was also listed separately in the university's Fellow List, even though she had received a fellowship. Her dissertation The Algebra of Logic was published by Peirce in Studies in Logic in 1883.

Scientific activity

In addition to Richard Mark Baldwin , Ladd-Franklin was co-editor of his Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901 to 1905), where she wrote articles under the acronym CLF. She tried in vain to give lectures at the Johns Hopkins for a long time, which she was only allowed to do between 1904 and 1909. In 1895 her husband gave up his professorial career and became a journalist . The couple moved to New York City in 1910 when he became associate editor of the New York Evening Post . Ladd-Franklin published further in particular on their color perception theory and gave lectures, for example, 1912–1913 at Columbia University , 1913 at Harvard University and 1914 at the University of Chicago . However, she did not succeed in obtaining a permanent academic position. But she lectured at national and international psychological and philosophical congresses.

Contributions to logic

Christine Ladd-Franklin dealt in her dissertation with the reduction of syllogisms in classical Aristotelian logic and gave a method to determine the validity of even complicated syllogisms. She called her method inconsistent triad or antilogism . The triad consists of the premises of the syllogism and its negated conclusion (conclusion). Any two elements of the triad exclude the third.

Physiological optics

Shortly before her death, she published a book in which she collected her essays on color perception ( Color and Color Theories , Routledge 1929). She had been concerned with the theory of vision since 1886. On a trip to Europe in 1891/1892, as part of her husband's sabbatical year , she conducted research in Georg Elias Müller's laboratory at the University of Göttingen . At that time no women were allowed there, she got a separate consent from Müller and heard from him privately. Then she went to Berlin , where she did research in Hermann von Helmholtz's laboratory and heard from Arthur König , who both advocated a three-color theory of color perception, in contrast to Müller with his theory of opposite colors. Franklin-Ladd developed her own theory in which she incorporated parts of the theories of Helmholtz, König and Müller. Their theory was based on an evolution from black-white to blue-yellow to red-green in the course of evolution. She presented her theory in 1892 at the International Congress of Psychology in London .

One of her works on physiological optics is devoted to the blue arc phenomenon . In 1924 she wrote an addendum for the English edition of Helmholtz's Manual of Physiological Optics .

Private life and activities related to women's rights

Since August 1882 she was married to the mathematics professor Fabian Franklin (1853–1939), with whom she had a daughter, Margaret, who later played an important role in the suffragette movement. Ladd-Franklin's mother and an aunt, Juliet Niles, who also financed Ladd-Franklin's studies, were women's rights activists, and Franklin-Ladd was a lifelong advocate for the admission and promotion of women at universities and in the academic world. For example, she asked the psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener to have women in general, and women in particular, speak at his then leading seminar in experimental psychology . She did not accept his declaration that there was a lot of smoking there and said that she even smoked in company. She was also responsible for the establishment of several scholarships specifically for women.

In 1887 she received an honorary degree LL. D. of Vassar College.

literature

Laurel Furumoto: Joining Separate Spheres: Christine Ladd-Franklin, woman scientist , American Psychologist, February 1992
Laurel Furumoto: Christine Ladd-Franklin's color theory: strategy for claiming scientific authority? , Annals New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 727, 1994, pp. 91-100.
Laurel Furumoto, E. Scarborough: Untold Lives: The first generation of American women psychologists , New York, Columbia University Press., 1987
Judy Green: Christine Ladd-Franklin , in Grinstein, Campbell (Ed.) Woman in Mathematics , Greenwood Press 1987
Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie : Women in science: antiquity through the nineteenth century: a biographical dictionary with annotated bibliography . 3. Edition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1991, ISBN 0-262-65038-X , p. 116 f.

Web links

Footnotes

↑ The Vassar College as a college especially for women had just been newly founded at that time. When she wanted to study, she especially had her grandmother to dispel concerns, but she made her believe that this would be the best way, as she would have poor chances of getting married.
↑ Quaternions , Volume 6, Issue 4, 1877, p. 172
↑ At first they wanted to delete it completely when the trustees discovered that a Christine was hiding behind C. Ladd. Sylvester vigorously objected.
^ Morris Cohen, Ernest Nagel Introduction to logic , Hackett Publ., 2nd edition 1993, p. 91
^ Entry Antilogism in Ted Honderich (editor) Oxford companion to philosophy , Oxford 1995.
↑ The Reddish Blue Arcs and the Reddish Blue Glow of the Retina; an Emanation from Stimulated Nerve Fiber , in 8th International Congress of Psychology: Proceedings and Papers, 1926.

personal data
SURNAME	Ladd-Franklin, Christine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American mathematician and psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH	December 1, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH	Windsor (Connecticut)
DATE OF DEATH	March 5, 1930
Place of death	New York City

[1] The Vassar College as a college especially for women had just been newly founded at that time. When she wanted to study, she especially had her grandmother to dispel concerns, but she made her believe that this would be the best way, as she would have poor chances of getting married.

[2] Quaternions , Volume 6, Issue 4, 1877, p. 172

[3] At first they wanted to delete it completely when the trustees discovered that a Christine was hiding behind C. Ladd. Sylvester vigorously objected.

[4] Morris Cohen, Ernest Nagel Introduction to logic , Hackett Publ., 2nd edition 1993, p. 91

[5] Entry Antilogism in Ted Honderich (editor) Oxford companion to philosophy , Oxford 1995.

[6] The Reddish Blue Arcs and the Reddish Blue Glow of the Retina; an Emanation from Stimulated Nerve Fiber , in 8th International Congress of Psychology: Proceedings and Papers, 1926.