Child was accepted to
Wesleyan University in Middletown. In 1890 he graduated Wesleyan with a
Bachelor of Philosophy and in 1892 he received a
Master of Science degree from the same university, having served as a graduate assistant in biology at Wesleyan from 1890 to 1892. Working under
Rudolf Leuckart at the
University of Leipzig, Child graduated with a
Doctor of Philosophy in 1894. Upon returning to the United States, he met Lydia Van Meter in 1895, and the couple married in 1899; they had one daughter, Jeannette Manning Child. In 1915, Child published
Individuality in Organisms, which dealt primarily with "the problem of the nature, of the unity, and order in the organism", according to an
American Social Hygiene Association review. He became a professor a year later, a position he held until his retirement in 1937. He became a member of the
National Academy of Sciences in 1935. After retiring, Child and his wife moved to Palo Alto, California, in 1939, where he lectured at
Stanford University. In 1941 Child published
Patterns and Problems of Development, which summarized his life work. After having multiple surgeries due to cancer, Child died on December 19, 1954, in Palo Alto; he was cremated, and the ashes were sent to the Van Meter plot in
Green Mount Cemetery,
Baltimore, Maryland. Writing for the
National Academy of Sciences in 1957, zoologist
Libbie Hyman called Child's devotion to science "of the purest sort" and "unmarred by personal ambition or striving for fame and position." ==References==