Christine Ladd-Franklin (December 1, 1847 – March 5, 1930) was an American psychologist, logician, and mathematician. Early life and education Christine Ladd, sometimes known by her nickname "Kitty", was born on December 1, 1847, in Windsor, Connecticut, to Eliphalet, a merchant, and Augusta (née 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. Family correspondence shows that Augusta and one of her sisters were both staunch supporters of women's rights. Even before Ladd had celebrated her fifth birthday, her mother had taken her to a lecture given by Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a well-known proponent of women's rights. Additionally, her father was a graduate professor who was supportive of his eldest daughter's education. Following the death of her mother in spring 1860 of pneumonia, Ladd went to live with her paternal grandmother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she attended school. Ladd's father remarried in 1862 and had two further children, 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." Her father enrolled her in a two-year program at the coeducational Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. At Wesleyan Academy she took the same courses her male classmates took to prepare for entrance to colleges such as Harvard. In 1865 Ladd graduated as valedictorian from Wesleyan Academy and pursued further education at Vassar College, supported by her family. In the fall of 1866 Ladd enrolled in Vassar College financed by a loan from her aunt, Juliet Niles, but left at the end of the spring term due to financial hardship. Ladd then worked as a public school teacher until her aunt's aid allowed her to re-enter Vassar and graduate with an A.B. degree 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 to enter into the male-dominated academia of the time. Under the guidance of Mitchell, Ladd became proficient and developed a love for physics and mathematics. Since women in nineteenth-century