Maria Montessori was born in Rome in 1870. She was the first woman medical graduate of the University of Rome. After working as Assistant Doctor in the Clinic of Psychiatry, she was the Director (1898-1900) of the Scuola Ortofrenica, a school for children with special needs which had been founded as a result of her interest in such children. She also studied Philosophy at the University of Rome, with particular emphasis on the psychology of childhood, and lectured to students there in Pedagogical Anthropology. Around 1909, she developed the Montessori method, the famous system of education for children aged three to six, based on free discipline and free choice by children from stimulating learning apparatus provided to them. She was soon in charge of 50 schools for slum children called the Case dei Bambini in which her system was applied. From 1919 onwards she travelled round the world every other year conducting courses in teaching by the Montessori method, holding similar courses every alternate year in London. She died in 1952.