Early Life and Academic Career
Wilkes, who was known as Kathy, was the daughter of Rev. J C Vaughan Wilkes who had been a master at Eton and Warden of Radley College before entering holy orders, and was for many years vicar of Marlow. Her paternal grandparents had founded and run St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, while her grandfather on her mother's side (the Very Rev Cyril Alington) had been Headmaster of Eton, Dean of Durham and author of many famous hymns. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey and St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she achieved a double First, and a Doctorate of Philosophy. Her achievement was all the greater in light of the excruciating pain she was suffering from as a result of a teenage riding accident. She spent a period at Princeton University, where she studied with Thomas Nagel, Richard Rorty and others, and then lived the life of an Oxbridge don. After a time at King's College, Cambridge, she became a fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1973, and was a lecturer in philosophy in the University of Oxford for the rest of her career.
Read more about this topic: Kathy Wilkes
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, academic and/or career:
“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)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“There are two births: the one when light
First strikes the new awakened sense;
The other when two souls unite,
And we must count our life from thence,
When you loved me and I loved you,
Then both of us were born anew.”
—William Cartwright (1611–1643)
“An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)