Merle Curti - Life

Life

Merle Eugene Curti was born in Papillion, suburb of Omaha, on September 15, 1897. His parents were John Eugene, immigrant from Switzerland, and Alice Hunt, a Yankee from Vermont. Curti went to high school in Omaha then went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in 1920 from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude. He then spent a year studying in France where he met Margaret Wooster, 1898-1963, a PhD from the University of Chicago who was a pioneer in research on child psychology. They married in 1925 and had two daughters. Curti also received his Ph. D. in 1927 from Harvard as one of the last students of Frederick Jackson Turner.

Curti taught at Beloit College, Smith College, and Columbia University. Then in 1942, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he taught for twenty-six years. He also taught in Japan, Australia, and India and lectured throughout Europe.

Read more about this topic:  Merle Curti

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
    Henry Miller (1891–1980)

    There are situations in life to which the only satisfactory response is a physically violent one. If you don’t make that response, you continually relive the unresolved situation over and over in your life.
    Russell Hoban (b. 1925)

    The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organize into a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as other are from over-fulness of meat and drink.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)