Maria Montessori was born on August 31, 1870, in the town of Chiaravalle, Italy. When she was twelve years old, her family moved to Rome. At her own request, she attended a technical school for boys. While studying there, biology became her passion. Because of this passion, Maria decided to study medicine and, overcoming numerous difficulties, became Italy’s first female doctor in 1896. In the year she graduated, she represented Italy in international conferences on women’s rights in Berlin (1896) and in London (1900).

After graduating, Maria Montessori began working at a psychiatric clinic and focused on educating children with mental disabilities. She had the opportunity to observe the effects of education on these children. In a completely empty room, with nothing for them to hold onto, she noticed that children with mental disabilities calmed down when they aligned food crumbs on the floor in a row. Having an extraordinary gift for observation and interpretation, Montessori understood what was happening. In her view, children had an instinctive desire to learn from their environment. Maria Montessori started working with these children and prepared them for a national examination. In that exam, children with mental disabilities achieved the same level of success as their peers. This result suddenly brought Dr. Maria Montessori fame across Europe.

In 1901, Montessori returned to university to study psychology and philosophy. In 1904, she became a professor of pediatric anthropology at the University of Rome.

Her observations at the psychiatric clinic and her university work led Montessori to form a new understanding of children—a perspective that was far ahead of its time.

In 1906, she accepted a position at a school in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of Rome, established to care for 60 children while their parents were at work. Her sole reason for accepting was the desire to observe firsthand the effectiveness of the educational method she was developing. In 1906, during the opening of the Casa dei Bambini, or Children’s House, a small ceremony was held. At this ceremony, Maria Montessori remarked to a friend beside her, “Today the opening of this school doesn’t attract much attention, but very soon many people will be interested in this little school.” She was proven correct, as visitors from all over the world later came to see it.

Montessori radically changed the traditional structure of children’s education. In her view, children were learning by themselves, and the true name for this was “development.” It was clear that development could not be taught. During this process, the child was constructing themselves. A century later, neuroscience research on developing children’s brains would strongly support her belief.

Maria Montessori visited the United States for the first time in 1913. That same year, Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel founded the Montessori Educational Association in their Washington, D.C. home. Other notable figures who supported the Montessori Method included Thomas Alva Edison and Helen Keller.

In 1915, the world’s attention once again turned to the Montessori Method. At an international exhibition in San Francisco, children worked with Montessori Materials inside a glass-walled classroom, focusing intently despite being surrounded by onlookers. This surprised everyone present: the children managed their own work freely and devoted lengthy periods of attention to it. Another remarkable aspect was that the children emerged from these activities calm and happy. Working and learning were inseparable parts of a child’s nature.

In 1917, the Spanish government invited Maria Montessori to establish a research institute. In 1919, she conducted a series of teacher-training courses in London. In 1922, she began serving as an education inspector in Italy; however, due to her opposition to Mussolini’s fascist regime, she was forced to leave Italy in 1934. She stayed in Spain until 1936. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, she was rescued by a British cruiser. In 1938, she opened a Montessori Teacher Training Center in Laren, in the Netherlands. In 1939, as in London, she gave a series of teacher-training courses in India.

Throughout her life, Maria Montessori witnessed many wars. This led her to shape her educational method as one rooted in peace for humanity. Because of her work in the name of peace, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949, 1950, and 1951.

Maria Montessori passed away in the Netherlands in 1952, leaving behind countless children who understood her far better than adults did.