author
Mary Mills Patrick
1850–1940
A pioneering educator in Istanbul, she spent decades building one of the most important higher-education institutions for women in the late Ottoman world. Her life joined scholarship, travel, and determined leadership at a time when few women had such opportunities.
1 Audiobook
Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism
by Mary Mills Patrick
About the author
Born in Canterbury, New Hampshire, on March 10, 1850, Mary Mills Patrick became an American educator, author, and missionary whose career was closely tied to women's education in Constantinople, now Istanbul. She is best known for leading the institution that became the American College for Girls, helping it grow from a mission school into a respected college for women.
Patrick taught in the Ottoman Empire from the 1870s and served as president of the college from 1890 to 1924. Sources describe her as a forceful and capable administrator who guided the school through major political upheavals, including years of war and change in Turkey, while keeping education for women at the center of its mission.
She was also a serious scholar, studying at several European universities and earning a doctorate from the University of Bern. Patrick later wrote about her experiences, and her career remains notable for the way it connected American education, international travel, and the expanding possibilities for women's intellectual life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.