1858-1940
American child psychologist best known for her seminal systematic observational study of a child.

As the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from the University of California, Milicent Shinn is credited today for her outstanding early American study, "Notes on the Development of a Child." First published in 1898 as a doctoral dissertation, this work is still hailed as a masterpiece and a classic in its field.

A native Californian, Shinn was born in 1858 to parents who emigrated from the East and established a farming homestead in Niles, California, where she lived her entire life. In 1879, at the age of 25, she became editor of the Overland Monthly, a literary magazine that had fallen on hard times in post-Civil War California. Dividing her time between the family ranch and the journal, Shinn cared for her aging...