Maria Montessori

Italian physician, the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree, who turned her clinical attention to how children actually learn. Working in the slums of Rome at the Casa dei Bambini (1907), she discovered that young children, given a prepared environment and respected as whole persons, would teach themselves with extraordinary concentration. Her method now shapes schools on every continent. She wrote that the great task of the adult is not to mold the child but to remove the obstacles to the child's own becoming, and to observe — patiently, humbly — what is already unfolding. Nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.