Julia Child

Child's mother was Julia Carolyn ("Caro") Weston (1877–1937), a paper-company heiress and daughter of Byron Curtis Weston, a lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.

Child was the eldest of three, followed by a brother, John McWilliams III, and sister, Dorothy Cousins.

Child attended Polytechnic School and Westridge School from 4th grade to 9th grade in Pasadena, California.

In high school, Child was sent to the Katherine Branson School in Ross, California, which was at the time a boarding school.

Child played tennis, golf, and basketball as a youth.

Child's father was John McWilliams Jr. (1880–1962), a Princeton University graduate and prominent land manager.

Julia Carolyn Child (née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American chef, author, and television personality.

On August 15, 1912, Julia Child was born as Julia Carolyn McWilliams in Pasadena, California.

Child also played sports while attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1934 with a major in history.

At the time she graduated, she planned to become a novelist, or perhaps a magazine writer.

Following her graduation from college, Child moved to New York City, where she worked for a time as a copywriter for the advertising department of W. & J. Sloane.

She was still hoping to become a novelist.

While Child grew up in a family with a cook, she did not observe or learn cooking from this person, and she never learned until she met her husband-to-be, Paul, who grew up in a family very interested in food.

Child joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942 after finding that at six feet, two inches (1.88 m) tall, she was too tall to enlist in the Women's Army Corps (WACs) or in the U.S. Navy's WAVES.

She began her OSS career as a typist at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., but, because of her education and experience, soon was given a position as a top-secret researcher working directly for the head of OSS, General William J. Donovan.

As a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, Child typed over 10,000 names on white note cards to keep track of officers.

For a year, she worked at the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section (ESRES) in Washington, D.C. as a file clerk and then as an assistant to developers of a shark repellent needed to ensure that sharks would not explode ordnance targeting German U-boats.

When Child was asked to solve the problem of too many OSS underwater explosives being set off by curious sharks, "Child's solution was to experiment with cooking various concoctions as a shark repellent," which were sprinkled in the water near the explosives and repelled sharks.

Still in use today, the experimental shark repellent "marked Child's first foray into the world of cooking."

During 1944–1945, Child was posted to Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where her responsibilities included "registering, cataloging and channeling a great volume of highly classified communications" for the OSS's clandestine stations in Asia.

She was later posted to Kunming, China, where she received the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service as head of the Registry of the OSS Secretariat.

For her service, Child received an award that cited her many virtues, including her "drive and inherent cheerfulness".

While in Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) she met Paul Cushing Child, also an OSS employee, and the two were married on September 1, 1946, in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, later moving to Washington, D.C. Paul, a New Jersey native who had lived in Paris as an artist and poet, was known for his sophisticated palate, and introduced his wife to fine cuisine.

He joined the United States Foreign Service, and, in 1948, the couple moved to Paris after the State Department assigned Paul there as an exhibits officer with the United States Information Agency.

The couple had no children.

Child repeatedly recalled her first meal at La Couronne in Rouen as a culinary revelation; once, she described the meal of oysters, sole meunière, and fine wine to The New York Times as "an opening up of the soul and spirit for me."

In 1951, she graduated from the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and later studied privately with Max Bugnard and other master chefs.

She joined the women's cooking club Le Cercle des Gourmettes, through which she met Simone Beck, who was writing a French cookbook for Americans with her friend Louisette Bertholle.

Beck proposed that Child work with them to make the book appeal to Americans.

In 1951, Child, Beck, and Bertholle began to teach cooking to American women in Child's Paris kitchen, calling their informal school L'école des trois gourmandes (The School of the Three Food Lovers).

For the next decade, as the Childs moved around Europe and finally to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three researched and repeatedly tested recipes.

Child translated the French into English, making the recipes detailed, interesting, and practical.

She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963.

In 1963, the Childs built a home near the Provence town of Plascassier in the hills above Cannes on property belonging to co-author Beck and her husband, Jean Fischbacher.

The Childs named it "La Pitchoune", a Provençal word meaning "the little one" but over time the property was often affectionately referred to simply as "La Peetch".

In his New York Times best-selling book, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, author Bob Spitz stated that Child was diagnosed with breast cancer in the mid-60s.

She had a mastectomy on February 28, 1968.

The three would-be authors initially signed a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin, which later rejected the manuscript for seeming too much like an encyclopedia.

As with other OSS records, her file was declassified in 2008.

Unlike other files, Child's complete file is available online.