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. It is regarded as the first woman to all necessary formal requirements for a doctorate in mathematics acquired in the United States (1883 ), although the promotion was formally recognized until 43 years later.

Life

Ladd - Franklin studied languages ​​and physics at Vassar College, where she graduated in 1869. She then worked as they then could make a career in physics, as a mathematics teacher in Pennsylvania and New York, and simultaneously published mathematical work, for example in the British Educational Times and The Analyst. They also took private lessons at Harvard University with the mathematicians WE Byerly and James Mills Peirce. In 1878 she was ( that is, with the objective of promotion ) study thanks to the intercession of James Joseph Sylvester, who knew their essays, at Johns Hopkins University in the Graduate Program. 1883 she completed her studies with a thesis in logic with Charles Sanders Peirce. Your formal doctoral degree she received, however, only in 1926, as women then at Johns Hopkins could not graduate. Also in the list Fellow of the University, she was just out separately, although they had received a Fellow Scholarship. Her dissertation The Algebra of Logic was published by Peirce in the Studies in Logic 1883.

She was co-editor alongside Richard Mark Baldwin of the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology ( 1901-1905 ), where she wrote articles under the symbol CLF. She tried in vain long at Johns Hopkins to give lectures, which was her only allowed from 1904 to 1909. 1895 was her husband on his professor career and became a journalist. The couple moved in 1910 to New York City when he was associate editor of the New York Evening Post there. Ladd - Franklin published more particularly to their perception of color theory and lectured for example 1912-1913 at Columbia University, in 1913 at Harvard University and in 1914 at the University of Chicago. She does, however, failed to get a permanent academic position. However, they argued on national and international psychological and philosophical congresses.

Since August 1882, she was the mathematics professor Fabian Franklin ( 1853-1939 ) married, with whom she had a daughter Margaret, who later played a significant role in the suffragette movement. The mother of Ladd - Franklin and an aunt Juliet Niles, who also financed their studies, were feminists and Franklin Ladd campaigned throughout his life for the approval and promotion of women at universities and in science one. For example, they asked the psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener on to have women in general, and they present themselves in particular in its then leading Seminar of Experimental Psychology. His explanation, there would be a lot of smoke, they did not accept and said that they would even smoke themselves in society. She was also responsible for establishing several scholarships specifically for women.

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

Contributions to logic

Christine Ladd - Franklin focused in her dissertation with the reduction of syllogisms in the classical Aristotelian logic and gave a method to determine the validity of even complicated syllogisms. Their method described them as Inconsistent Triad or Antilogismus. The triad consists of the premises of the syllogism and its negated conclusion ( Konklusio ). The two elements of the triad close of the third.

Work on physiological optics

She published shortly before her death, a book in which she collected her essays on color perception ( Color and Color Theories, Routledge 1929). With the theory of vision, she dealt since 1886. During a European tour (as part of her husband's sabbatical year ) 1891/1892 she did research in the laboratory of Georg Elias Müller at Göttingen University ( originally there were not women allowed there, they took a to separate consent of Müller and listened to him privately ). Then she went to Berlin, where she did research in the laboratory of Hermann von Helmholtz and heard at Arthur King, both advocated a three-color theory of color perception, unlike Müller with his theory of opposite colors. Ladd Franklin developed his own theory that parts of the theories of Helmholtz, King and Müller incorporated. Her theory went from an evolution of black -and-white to blue - yellow to red - green of the course of evolution. She put her theory before 1892 at the International Congress of Psychology in London.

One of her work on physiological optics is dedicated to the Blue Arc Phenomenon. For the English edition of the Handbook of Physiological Optics von Helmholtz in 1924, she wrote an addendum.