Harvard University, May 29, 1895
To
The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Gentlemen:
The department of philosophy hereby announce to you that they have informally examined Miss Mary Whiton Calkins as for the degree of Ph.D.
The reasons for this irregular step are the following. For more than the required period Miss Calkins, by permission of the Corporation, has been studying philosophy at Harvard, and is now ready to offer herself for the doctor's degree. She is prevented from doing so only by the fact that the arrangements for the giving of this degree, either by Harvard or Radcliffe, are not yet complete. Probably within a year or two some such arrangement will be made. In the meantime Professor Münsterberg - with whom Miss Calkins has conducted her chief research, the subject of her thesis - leaves us. To oblige her to defer her examination cuts her off from the most important of her examiners. Under these circumstances it has seemed reasonable to the department to offer her an informal and unauthorized examination - of the same character and severity, however, as those which are regular - to report the result to the Corporation, and to leave it to them to decide what use, if any, shall be made of it in this or a subsequent year.
The department accordingly report that Miss Calkins presented for her thesis “An Experimental Research on the Association of Ideas”, a paper embodying the results of investigations conducted partly at Clark University, and during two continuous years in the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. The paper contained, besides, a summary of what had already been accomplished in the same field by other investigators. At the examination, held May 28, 1895, before Professors Palmer, James, Royce, Münsterberg, Hanus, and Dr. Santayana, it was unanimously voted that Miss Calkins satisfied all the customary requirements for the degree.
The committee further voted to put on record that in their judgment the scholarly intelligence displayed by Miss Calkins was exceptionally high, when compared with that of nearly all the candidates hitherto examined for the degree in this department.
Very respectfully,
(signed) Josiah Royce, Chairman.
G.H. Palmer.
Wm. James
G. Santayana.
Hugo Münsterberg.
Paul H. Hanus.
