Grace Mead de Laguna | |
---|---|
Born | Grace Mead Andrus September 28, 1878 |
Died | February 17, 1978 | (aged 99)
Alma mater | Cornell University |
Occupation | Academic Philosopher |
Employer | Bryn Mawr College |
Spouse | Theodore de Laguna m. 1905 |
Children | Frederica de Laguna, Wallace de Laguna |
Grace Mead de Laguna (28 September 1878 – 17 February 1978) was an American philosopher who taught at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
Grace Mead Andrus was born on 28 September 1878 in East Berlin, Connecticut.[1] She was the youngest child, and only daughter, of Wallace R. Andrus and Annis Andrus (née Mead).[1][2] Both parents were of Connecticut ancestry dating back to the 17th century.[2][3] Her mother, Annis, had been a school teacher.[1] Her father had served with the 17th Connecticut Volunteers during the Civil War,[2][4] He would later work as a land agent for the Northern Pacific Railway whilst it was being built.[4] This led to the family moving, whilst Grace was young, to the (then) Washington Territory, first to Cheney, then Tacoma, where she received a pioneer upbringing.[1][2]
Grace Andrus took the AB from Cornell University in 1903, where she was Phi Beta Kappa.[5] And, upon presentation of a dissertation titled “The Mechanical Theory in Pre-Kantian Rationalism”, she received her PhD in philosophy there in 1906.[2][5]
Whilst studying for the latter she met Theodore de Laguna, an instructor there, whom she married in 1905.[4][5][6]
After holding a position at the University of Michigan from 1905,[6] Theodore served, from 1907, as a professor of philosophy at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.[7] Grace became an assistant professor there in 1912, an associate professor in 1916 and a full professor in 1928.[2][5][8] She became chair of philosophy at Bryn Mawr after Theodore's death in 1930.[4][5][9] She would retire as Professor Emerita in 1944.[1] She continued to write, publishing her third book in 1963.[5]
Her daughter, born in 1906, was the anthropologist Frederica de Laguna, whom Grace would accompany on several anthropological field trips.[8][9] Her son Wallace de Laguna, who was born in 1910, was a geologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey and later for the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee.[8][10]
Grace de Laguna died, aged 99, on 17 February 1978 in Devon, Pennsylvania.[3][11]
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