Christine Ladd-Franklin

Christine Ladd-Franklin (born Dec. 1, 1847, Windsor, Conn., U.S.—died March 5, 1930, New York, N.Y.) was an American scientist and logician known for contributions to the theory of colour vision.

She earned an A.B. at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1869 and then studied mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Although she held a fellowship, 1879–82, and fulfilled all the requirements for the Ph.D., she was not awarded the degree until 1926 because at the time of her graduate work the university did not officially recognize women candidates. She taught logic and philosophy at Johns Hopkins from 1904 to 1909 and lectured at Columbia University in New York City from 1910 to 1930.

She is probably best-known for her work on colour vision. While studying in Germany in 1891–92, she developed the Ladd-Franklin theory, which emphasized the evolutionary development of increased differentiation in colour vision and assumed a photochemical model for the visual system. Her theory, which criticized the views of Hermann von Helmholtz and Ewald Hering, was widely accepted for a number of years.

Earlier in her career, while investigating the problems of symbolic logic, she reduced syllogistic reasoning to an “inconsistent triad” with the introduction of the “antilogism,” a form which made the testing of deductions easier. Ladd-Franklin also published numerous papers on mathematics and binocular vision. Her principal works are “The Algebra of Logic” (1883), “The Nature of Color Sensation” (1925), and Colour and Colour Theories (1929).