Christine Ladd-Franklin

Christine Ladd-Franklin (1 December, 1847 - 5 March, 1930) was an American psychologist and logician.

Christine Ladd-Franklin was born in Windsor, Connecticut to Eliphalet Ladd and Augusta Niles. In 1869 she graduated from the newly opened Vassar College, where she studied linguistics and physics. After graduation, as women were not granted much access to labs and observatories, she turned to mathematics, which did not require any apparatus. She taught science and mathematics in Washington, Pennsylvania at the secondary level until 1878, while also contributing several articles on mathematics to the Educational Times of Great Britain.

With the help of James Joseph Sylvester, Ladd was able to enroll for graduate study at Johns Hopkins University in 1878. She wrote a dissertation on The Algebra of Logic with Charles Peirce as the thesis advisor and in 1882 she earned a Ph.D. in logic and mathematics. However, the Ph.D. was awarded to her only decades later, in 1926.

On 24 August 1882 she married Fabian Franklin, a Johns Hopkins mathematics professor. They had two children, a son who lived only a few days and a daughter Margaret Ladd Franklin who grew up and became a prominent member of the women's suffrage movement. Christine herself helped many women participate in graduate education. Christine died on 5 March 1930 in New York City.

Christine Ladd-Franklin was interested in vision – particularly color vision – and in 1929 she published Color and Color Theories.

Published works

 * On Some Characteristics of Symbolic Logic. 1889
 * Epistemology for the logician 1908
 * The reddish blue arcs and the reddish blue glow of the retina; an emanation from stimulated nerve fibre. 1926
 * Colour and colour theories, 1929