William James was born in New York City on 11 January 1842, the brother of the novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. He trained as a physician, earning his medical degree in 1869, and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practised medicine. He spent almost all of his career at Harvard.
His Principles of Psychology (1890) took twelve years to write, and he is often called the father of American psychology. He co-founded the philosophy of pragmatism with Charles Sanders Peirce and wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). In 1892 Harvard asked him to give public lectures on psychology to Cambridge teachers, which became Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899). He died at his home in Chocorua, New Hampshire, on 26 August 1910.