Early Life
Nice was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. The daughter of Anson D. Morse, Professor of History at Amherst College, and Margaret Duncan (Ely), she was the fourth child with two older brothers Ely and William, an elder sister Sarah, a younger sister Katherine and two younger brothers, Harold and Edward.
In her autobiography Research Is a Passion With Me (1979), she wrote that "the most cherished Christmas present of my life came in 1895. Mabel Osgood Wright's Bird-Craft." This book had color illustrations of birds and it guided her to keep notes on local birds when she was twelve years old. With careful note making she was even able to compare her notes taken when she was 13 years old and compare the rates of fledgling success of young American robins, chipping sparrows, and least flycatchers 61 years later.
She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1906 and M.A. in biology from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1915. At Clark University she was only one of two women graduate students. During this time she produced the first comprehensive study on the diet of the Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus).
Read more about this topic: Margaret Morse Nice
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)