Mary Whiton Calkins was born on March 30, 1863 in Hartford, Connecticut, but spent most of her childhood in Buffalo, New York. Mary was the oldest of five children born to her Puritan mother and minister father. According to some sources, Calkin's father had a great distrust of public education, and preferred educating his children by boarding them with French and German families. It is recorded, though, that Mary Calkins graduated from an established high school in Newton, Massachusetts. Calkins indicated her interest in philosophy in high school by writing a graduation essay entitled "The Apology Plato should have written: a vindication of the character Xantippi." Johnson, 1997 & McHenry, 1995)
             Calkins entered Smith College in 1882 as a sophomore, but left the following spring when her sister became ill and died. She remained home the following academic year, studying Greek and tutoring two of her younger brothers. Calkins re-entered Smith College in the fall of 1984 with senior standing and graduated the following spring with a degree concentrated in classics and philosophy. (Johnson, 1997)
             After Calkins graduation from Smith, she spent a year studying social and economic issues with a women's organization called the Newton Social Science
             Club. Calkins researched her first paper entitled
             Sharing the Profits (1888), during this period (Johnson, 1997). The following year, Calkins, and her family went on a journey to Europe where Calkins attended Leipzig University for a short while and studied with Wilhelm Wundt. (McHenry, 1995). The Calkins family traveled on to Greece where Mary studied Modern Greek (Johnson, 1997).
             Calkins began her career in academia immediately upon her return when she was offered a position as a Greek teacher at Wellesley College. During her time at Wellesley, Calkins made her interests in philosophy known and she was recommended to fulfill the position of teaching courses i...