E.L. (Elaine Lobl) Konigsburg was born in 1930 in New York City, but she was raised in small Pennsylvania towns. She was the second of three daughters born to Jewish immigrants, and moved around several times during her childhood. She was the valedictorian at her high school graduation, but lived in a small, primarily uneducated community without much access to scholarships, and therefore had to work menial jobs at a meatpacking plant to pay for college.
After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University she became a chemist, working in a laboratory and then attending graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. This was interrupted when she and her husband, David, a psychologist,...
