Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori (1870 to 1952) was an Italian physician and educator. Born in Chiaravalle in the province of Ancona, she first thought of becoming an engineer, then entered medical school at the University of Rome and became one of the first women in Italy to study medicine, graduating with honors in 1896. In her final years of study she worked in pediatrics and psychiatry, and as a young doctor she researched and treated children with cognitive delay and disability, work that led her toward questions of how children learn. She went on to develop the Montessori method of education and wrote on scientific pedagogy. In the Medicine Atlas she is recorded as a trained physician whose clinical work with children shaped a method now used in schools around the world.