Ward was born in
Kingston upon Hull, the eldest of nine children. His father was an unsuccessful merchant. Ward was educated at the
Liverpool Institute and
Mostyn House, but his formal schooling ended when his father became bankrupt. Apprenticed to a
Liverpool architect for four years, Ward studied Greek and logic and was a
Sunday school teacher. In 1863, he entered
Spring Hill College, near
Birmingham, to train for the
Congregationalist ministry. An eccentric and impoverished student, he remained at Spring Hill until 1869, completing his theological studies as well as gaining a
University of London BA degree. In 1869–1870, Ward won a scholarship to Germany, where he attended the lectures of Isaac Dormer in
Berlin before moving to
Göttingen to study under
Hermann Lotze. On his return to Britain Ward became minister at
Emmanuel Congregational Church in
Cambridge, where his theological liberalism unhappily antagonised his congregation. Sympathetic to Ward's predicament,
Henry Sidgwick encouraged Ward to enter
Cambridge University. Initially a
non-collegiate student, Ward won a scholarship to
Trinity College in 1873, and achieved a first class in the moral sciences tripos in 1874. With a dissertation entitled
The Relation of Physiology to Psychology, Ward won a Trinity fellowship in 1875. Some of this work, ''An Interpretation of
Fechner's Law, was published in the first volume of the new journal Mind'' (1876). For the rest of his life, the
Dictionary of National Biography reports that he: During 1876–1877 he returned to Germany, studying in
Carl Ludwig's
Leipzig physiological institute. Back in Cambridge, Ward continued physiological research under
Michael Foster, publishing a pair of physiological papers in 1879 and 1880. From 1880 onwards Ward moved away from physiology to psychology. His article
Psychology for the ninth edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica – criticising
associationist psychology with an emphasis upon the mind's active attention to the world – became enormously influential. Ward was a strong supporter of women's education, and met his Irish-born
suffragist wife-to-be,
Mary (née Martin), when she attended one of his series of lectures. The couple married in
Nottingham on 31 July 1884, and settled in Cambridge in a house built for them by
J. J. Stevenson. She went on to become a lecturer in moral sciences at
Newnham College, and a member of the
Ladies Dining Society. They had two daughters and a son. Ward was elected to the new Chair of Mental Philosophy and Logic in 1897, his students including
G. E. Moore,
Bertrand Russell, He served as president of the
Aristotelian Society from 1919 to 1920. Ward died in Cambridge, and was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium. ==Philosophical work==