1870-1952
Educator And Physician

Groundbreaker. Maria Montessori was born into a middleclass, well-educated family in Chiaravalle, Italy, and she lived most of her life in Rome. Her parents, especially her mother, supported her educational goals, and she attended a technical school primarily designed for students planning careers in the sciences. Most nineteenth-century career women were teachers or nurses, but Montessori wanted to become a scientist and entered the University of Rome. She eventually turned to medicine, and in 1896 she became the first modern Italian woman to receive a doctorate in medicine at the University of Rome. During the late 1890s she worked in Rome at institutions for the mentally disabled. During her work with the disabled she became interested in how children learn and respond to their environments.

A New Woman. Having defied the traditional path of most bourgeois women of her day, Montessori was one...