User:Snbehm/sandbox

NOTE FOR DR. PERKINS: Below I have included the main section that I have chosen to edit for the assignment. I have chosen to include a few sentences about her mother being a suffragette during her childhood, a paragraph about her family not wanting her to attend college and sacrifice getting a husband, and additional information/sentences about her time at Vassar college including her mentors. I am considering adding additional information to her reasoning for not pursuing physics since it was a very male dominated subject. I may also choose to insert some information in other sections about her experience in Germany with Helmholtz and her technique in creating her theory of color vision.

Early life and education
Christine Ladd, sometimes known by her nickname "Kitty," was born on December 1, 1847 in Windsor, Connecticut to Eliphalet Ladd, a merchant, and Augusta Niles Ladd. During her early childhood, she lived with her parents and younger brother Henry (born 1850) in New York City. In 1853 the family moved back to Windsor, Connecticut where her sister Jane Augusta Ladd McCordia was born the following year. Throughout her childhood, Ladd's mother and aunt, Juliet Niles, often chose to bring the young Christine with them to numerous women's rights lectures and suffrage meetings because both were incredibly passionate supporters of women's rights. Augusta Ladd believed that women had every right to be in the same positions that were held by men and "belonged every place where a man should be." Ladd's mother wanted to instill these same beliefs into her impressionable daughter so that she could grow up to be successful in later life and not be held back by societal expectations.

Following the death of her mother in spring 1860 to pneumonia, Ladd went to live with her paternal grandmother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where she attended school. Ladd's father remarried in 1862 and produced her half-sister Katherine (born 1862) and half-brother George (born 1867). Ladd was a precocious child who sought to find “a mean to continue her education beyond secondary school.”. Ladd's wish was granted when her father enrolled her in a two-year program at a coeducational Welshing academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts; she took the same courses that prepared boys in furthering their education to colleges such as Harvard.

In 1865 Christine Ladd graduated as valedictorian from Welshing Academy and made the decision to pursue further education at Vassar College. This decision would not be supported by her family due to the fact that Ladd's father and grandmother believed college was unnecessary for a woman and by choosing to go to Vassar, Ladd would end up being too old to take a husband. The family saw college as a hindrance since women in the nineteenth century were expected to wed young, produce children, and stay at home to raise a family. Ladd was ultimately able to argue that she was "not attractive enough to find a husband and that there was a shortage of men as a result of the Civil War." This argument was eventually effective in convincing her family that college was the best option for her.

In the fall of 1866 Ladd enrolled in Vassar College with a loan provided by her late mother's sister. She only studied at Vassar until the end of the spring term due to financial issues. During the time that she was not attending college Ladd worked as a public school teacher until her aunt's aid allowed her to reenter Vassar and graduate in 1869. While attending Vassar, 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" Mitchell was also a suffragette and strove to inspire women to gain more self-confidence in order to succeed in male-dominated fields during the time period. Under the guidance of Mitchell, Ladd was able to blossom and quickly developed a love for the fields of physics and mathematics. Since women in the nineteenth century were not allowed in the male dominated physics laboratories, Ladd was unable to pursue her first love of physics and chose instead to study mathematics. Later in her life, Ladd would eventually reflect back 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.