Mary Whiton Calkins attended Newton High School in Newton, Massachusetts. In 1882, she entered Smith College with advanced placement as a sophomore. Calkins left Smith in 1883 after her sister died and took private lessons in Greek. She reentered Smith in 1884 excelling in Greek and Philosophy and received second honors for her senior essay entitled, "The Old Testament Teaching of Immortality." In May 1886 Calkins moved to Europe with her family. It was here that she engaged in the research that would result in her first book, Sharing the Profits which was published in 1888. In 1887, she returned to the United States and began tutoring the classics at Wellesley College. She became a Greek instructor in 1889. Then, due to a dearth of professors at the college, she was asked to teach metaphysics and psychology. Calkins remained in the Boston area to study with prominent scholars of psychology and philosophy at Harvard and with Edmund C. Sanford at Clark University. Her dream study research with Sanford earned her intellectual standing and her studies with William James, Josiah Royce and Hugo Munsterberg earned her the respect and admiration of those thinkers who praised her as one of their most brilliant pupils. She published her first paper under the guidance of James in the July, 1892 issue of the Philosophical Review. In 1895, she tested for a Ph.D from Harvard prompting William James to rank her oral examination as the most impressive he had heard. However, Harvard did not award Ph.D's to women at this time and thus refused her the degree even though the Philosophy Department had already passed her with distinction and submitted their recommendation in the affirmative. 1895 saw Calkin's appointment to Associate Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Wellesley. She established a laboratory there, the first founded by a woman in the country. The lab was created in the attic on the fifth floor of old College Hall with the help of Dr. Sanford. Four important books written by Calkins were An Introduction to Psychology (1901), The Persistant Problems of Philosophy (1907), A First Book in Psychology (1909), The Good Man and The Good (1918). She wrote over one-hundred articles and papers, equally divided between psychology and philosophy. Calkins was the only woman to have been named president of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Psychological Association. The only others to achieve this were her mentors, William James and Hugo Munsterberg. She was lionized at Wellesley College and was awarded honorary degrees by Columbia University and Smith College. The British Psychology Society asked her to address their anual meeting and awarded her an honorary membership in 1927. Also that year a number of professors and administrators petitioned Harvard to grant her the Ph.D. She was denied.

Unfortunately, Calkins' influence on psychology did not survive her death. Despite her pioneering efforts and important contributions to American philosophy and psychology, her achievements have often been overlooked.