Irving Adler - Career As An Author

Career As An Author

Adler wrote his first science for children, The Secret of Light, while still working as a teacher. It was published by International Publishers in 1952. In 1955 he began a long association with the John Day Company, his first title for them being Time in Your Life. Although the majority Adler's books were published by the John Day Company, he had seven published by Alfred A. Knopf, under the pen name "Robert Irving", and several by Golden Press and Doubleday under his own name. Adler wrote six books a year for many years, mostly on scientific subjects for the junior-high and high-school levels.

A book Adler wrote for adults in 1958, The New Mathematics, was important in the "New Math" curriculum reform movement, and led to his frequent appearances at educational meetings throughout North America.

In 1959, Irving and Ruth Adler together began writing "The Reason Why" series of books about scientific concepts for elementary school children. Adler also wrote The Giant Golden Book of Mathematics followed by a series of six arithmetic workbooks for grade-school children, aptly named Mathematics - Grade 1 through Mathematics - Grade 6. His workbooks eventually sold about 28 million copies worldwide.

Irving and Ruth Adler moved from their home in Bayside, New York, to Shaftsbury, Vermont, at the end of 1960. In 1961, Irving Adler completed his doctorate in mathematics at Columbia University under supervision of Ellis Kolchin. After moving to Vermont, he became the chairman of a committee of Vermont peace organizations that mobilized against atmospheric testing of atomic weapons; led a contingent from southern Vermont to the 1963 March on Washington; and was president of a group called the Vermont-in-Mississippi Corporation that supported civil rights activities in the southern U.S.

Ruth Adler died of cancer in early 1968. Later that year, Irving Adler married Joyce Sparer, a long-time family friend who had been teaching in Guyana. Irving and Joyce Sparer Adler co-authored Language and Man (1970), after which she pursued her own writings. After the death of Joyce's daughter Ellen, her three children came to live with them in Shaftsbury in 1977 and Adler retired from writing full-time. In 1984, the Adlers embarked on an around-the-world lecture tour, speaking at universities in Australia, New Zealand, and several countries in Asia, and Europe.