Background
Erickson was born in Oak Park, Illinois a suburb of Chicago, where her father was a Swedish Lutheran minister.
Erickson was born in Oak Park, Illinois a suburb of Chicago, where her father was a Swedish Lutheran minister.
She graduated from Augustana College at Rock Island, Illinois in 1945, and from Cornell University with a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy. In 1944, when she attended the summer seminar of the Institute of World Affairs. She studied at the London School of Economics, between 1948 and 1950, under the guidance of Professor Thomas Stearns Ashton and under Professor David Glass.
In 1950 to 1952, she taught at Vassar College. In 1976-1978, she was Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. In 1982, she was the Paul Mellon chair of American History at Cambridge University.