Margaret Floy Washburn Role Model

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Margaret Floy Washburn
By
Sara Kim
Margaret Floy Washburn was a role model and highly respected figure to many women. Washburn was born in 1871 in Harlem, New York City to Elizabeth Floy Washburn and Reverend Francis. Margaret Floy Washburn was an only child, and she explained the "blessed privilege of an only child to be undisturbed when at leisure". She started her academic learning at the age of seven, but knew how to read and write far before. At the age of eleven she attended public school for the first time, and by the age of fifteen, she graduated high school.
Washburn had a very intelligent mind and attended many college universities. She started at Vassar College where her main focus was French and Chemistry. Five years later …show more content…

Degree from Vassar a year after working under E.B. Titchener where she was his only first and only major graduate student. She also got her Ph.D. from Cornell which was the first Ph.D. that E.B. Titchener had ever recommended. She went onto Wells College and, being the first woman to get a doctorate in the field of psychology, was a professor of psychology, philosophy, and ethics. Washburn eventually went on to be the only woman staff member at the University of Cincinnati, but quit that job and moved back to where she started at Vassar College and became a professor of Psychology there. As a fairly distinguished and well known member of the field, she was appointed as an editor of the American Psychology Association and recognized as one of the most important "men of science".
Margaret Washburn is known for her studies on animal behavior and motor development theory. She argues that animal's mental states should be studied along with their behavior. She explained her studies in her book The Animal Mind which showed her studied of over 100 different species and their consciousness, psychology, and behavior. Washburn had a strong interest in studying how mental states could be shown through behavior which is where she developed her theory about motor development. She argued that all mental functions resulted in physical

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