Extract

(1864–1941) Jessica Blanche Peixotto was born in New York on 9 October 1864, to Myrtilla Jessica (Davis) Peixotto and Raphael Peixotto. Within a few years her family moved to San Francisco where Raphael soon established himself as a prominent merchant and leading citizen. Jessica graduated from high school in 1880 and had hoped to enter the University of California at Berkeley. But Raphael opposed his only daughter’s desire, apparently convinced that ‘university life was not appropriate for a young girl to whom were available the rich opportunities within a cultured home circle’ (Hatfield, 1935, p. 5). Instead, he arranged a series of tutors who privately instructed Jessica in a wide variety of subjects (Chambers, 1971, p. 42). At the age of 27, Peixotto enrolled at Berkeley as a special student not seeking a degree. After an undistinguished first year, she became serious about her studies and completed a four-year Ph.B. degree in the spring of 1894. In the next academic year, she began graduate studies in the Department of Political Science, and pursued a special interest in economics even thought she had completed only two economics courses as an undergraduate. She spent 1896– 97 at the Sorbonne conducting research for her thesis, ‘A Comparative Study of the Principles of the French Revolution and the Doctrines of Modern French Socialism’, which was subsequently published under a slightly different title (Peixotto, 1901). In May 1900, Peixotto became the second woman to be awarded a doctoral degree by the University of...