Gertrude Geraldine Michelson

Gertrude Geraldine Michelson was born Gertrude Geraldine Rosen in Jamestown, New York, on June 3, 1925,[1] to Celia (née Cohen) and Thomas Rosen, Jewish immigrants from near Vilna in the Russian Empire. Michelson was the youngest of three children, and when she was eleven her mother died of tuberculosis. During her youth, the family traveled around the United States,[2] spending time living in the Southwest in hopes that the air would heal Celia's illness, though Michelson and her siblings spent time in an orphanage while treatment was sought. After Celia died, the family moved to Upstate New York.[3]Michelson studied industrial psychology at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1945 aged nineteen