Julia Child
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food & wine
1912 – 2004
California Connection
- Pasadena native and later Santa Barbara resident
Achievements
A renowned cook, author, and television personality, Julia Child made French cuisine accessible to the American public and inspired millions to appreciate the pleasures of making and eating good food.
Biography current as of induction in 2024
Born Julia McWilliams, she grew up in Pasadena, the eldest of three children After graduating from Smith College with a history degree, she moved to Manhattan with a dream to become a novelist and worked as an advertising copywriter.
Eager to help her country during World War II, she began working as a typist for the U.S. Information Agency but soon was transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Responsible for handling highly classified information, she was posted to Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka) and Kunming, China, ultimately serving as Chief of the OSS Registry with top security clearances.
In 1946, she married Paul Child, an OSS officer whom she had met in Ceylon. Though she took a cooking class to prepare for married life, her early efforts in the kitchen were disastrous. In 1948, the couple moved to Paris, where she studied at the famed cooking school Le Cordon Bleu. She then taught cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, with whom she wrote the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). In 1963, Boston’s WGBH launched The French Chef television series, which made her a national celebrity, earning her a Peabody Award in 1964 and an Emmy in 1966, the first of several.
After a more than 50-year career as an author, teacher, and advocate for home cooking, including numerous public television series and bestselling cookbooks, Child remains a beloved culinary icon. In 2002, her Cambridge, Massachusetts, kitchen, featured in many of her television series, was displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where it now anchors the museum’s first major exhibit on food history. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2000 and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003 for her contributions to French and American culture.
Child died in Santa Barbara, California, in 2004, two days before her 92nd birthday. Since then, The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, which Child established before she died, has continued her legacy by educating and encouraging others to cook, eat, and drink well, through grants and by presenting the annual Julia Child Award.
Julia Child cooks at the stove of her Paris apartment on Rue de l’Université, circa 1950. Photograph by Paul Child. © Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Louisette Bertholle, Julia Child, and Simone Beck cook fish at the École des Trois Gourmandes. Julia Child image, photograph & related rights™/© 2024. The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts.
Julia Child prepares salade niçoise and chicken fricassée on the set of The French Chef, March 7, 1963. Photograph by Paul Child. © Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
View more inductees from the 18th class, inducted in 2024.