Maud Merrill James

James was born Maud Amanda Merrill in 1888 in Owatonna, Minnesota. As a child she lived at the Minnesota State School for Dependent and Neglected Children, an orphanage of which her father was the director. She earned a psychology degree from Oberlin College in 1911.

Employed by the Minnesota Bureau of Research, James was a research assistant assigned to the Faribault Minnesota State Home for the Feeble Minded and she worked as an assistant to bureau head Fred Kuhlmann. After several years with the bureau, she decided to return to school to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology. James wrote to Stanford to inquire about their graduate psychology program, but department head Frank Angell sent her a lukewarm reply asking her why she could not attend a school closer to her.

Upon hearing about Angell's reply, Kuhlmann decided to intervene on James's behalf. Kuhlmann wrote directly to educational psychology professor Lewis Terman, a well-known intelligence researcher with whom James hoped to work. James worked with Terman as she earned a master's degree in education. Terman later took over as head of the psychology department, and James earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford in 1923.

James became a faculty member at Stanford, where she continued to work with Terman. The pair collaborated on Genetic Studies of Genius, a longitudinal study of highly intelligent people. Terman and James published a second edition of his Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (1931). Though she retired in 1954 and Terman died in 1956, James released a third edition of the scales in 1960. James was a mentor to budding developmental psychologist Jeanne Block, who became known for her studies of twin and non-twin siblings.

James also worked as a consultant for the juvenile courts in San Jose, California. That work introduced her to Judge William Francis James, who she grew fond of and married in 1933. The work also inspired her 1947 book, Problems of Child Delinquency. That book explored the environments and temperaments of delinquent children. In a review of the book, Ohio State University professor Walter Reckless said that her work "gives ample reason to reconsider the factor of the broken-home family, which many sociologists have discounted in recent years, as well as the IQ level in determining delinquency..."

James died at her home in 1978. She lived on the Stanford University campus for nearly 60 years as a graduate student, faculty member and retiree. She was predeceased by her husband in 1966.