Edward Begle was a topologist and served as a mathematician within the faculty of Princeton University, University of Michigan, and Yale University. In 1951 he was elected Secretary of the American Mathematical Society, a position he held for six years, and in 1958 he was appointed the director of the famous School Mathematics Study Group. He served as director of SMSG for the duration of the project, from 1958 to 1972. In 1961 Begle, and SMSG, moved to Stanford University where Begle to begin with held a joint position as professor in the department of Mathematics and in the School of Education. As a result of his growing interest in educational topics, his appointment was later shifted entirely to the School of Education. The work of Ed Beagle in Mathematics Education was valued sufficiently by the Mathematical Association of American that they named a conference room in their Washington DC offices in his honor after his death in 1978.

In 1969, Ed Begle addressed the First International Congress on Mathematics Education. His topic was "The Role of Research in the Improvement of Mathematics Education." He pointed out that many questions had been raised about mathematics education in the previous decade and that the answers to most of those questions had a factual aspect. He went on to say "that the factual aspect has been badly neglected in our discussions and that most of the answers we have been provided have generally had little empirical justification" He asked that we turn mathematics education into an experimental science, following "a carefully correlated pattern of observation and speculation, the pattern so successfully employed by the physical and natural sciences".

The literature that has resulted in the intervening years since that 1969 speech has demonstrated the impact of Ed Beagle's call for a more empirical approach to research in mathematics education. However, as with most of the social sciences Mathematics Education is not an entirely experimental science. Educational research takes many forms both empirical quantatative research and qualitative research, both which are equally important. Ed Beagle was instrumental in emphasizing the role of research in Mathematics Education and how it can help improve school mathematics. When Begle was promoting his ideas of an empiricist science of Mathemat ics Education, Sputnick influenced the great push for better mathematicians and scientists.

Books & Publications

Critical variables in mathematics education: Findings from a survey of the empirical literature

Mathematics education, the sixty-ninth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (EG Begle editor)

Mathematics education (EG Begle editor)

Teacher knowledge and pupil achievement in algebra