Irving Adler - Early Life

Early Life

Irving Adler was born in Harlem, in New York City, the third of five children. His parents emigrated to the United States from Galicia, a part of Austria, which today is a part of Poland, with his father coming in 1905 to seek work and his mother following five years later. His father, working first as a house-painter, earned enough money to start a small business selling ice, coal, wood, seltzer, and prohibition beer (less than 1/2 of 1% alcohol). Adler was given the Hebrew name Yitzchak, anglicized on his birth certificate as Isaac. His name was changed to Irving by a school clerk when he was enrolled in elementary school. Adler was accelerated in school five times, entering Townsend Harris High School at age eleven and beginning City College (CCNY) when he was fourteen. During his junior year he was awarded the Belden Gold Medal for excellence in mathematics and a Silver Medal for ranking second in the college. Adler graduated magna cum laude from CCNY in 1931, when he was 18.

Adler began his teaching career with a one-year appointment as a teacher-in-training at Stuyvesant High School. After being licensed as a regular teacher, he taught for three years as a substitute teacher during a period when the Board of Education, in violation of state law, refused to fill vacancies with regular teachers entitled to full benefits. He joined the Unemployed Teachers Association, which filed a law suit that resulted in 3,500 teachers, including Adler, being elevated from substitute to regular status in one day.

In the course of Adler's activities in the student peace movement of the 1930s, he met Ruth Relis, a Barnard College student whom he married when she graduated in 1935. Irving and Ruth Adler had two children, Stephen and Peggy.

Adler taught mathematics at various New York high schools during the 1930s and 1940s. He was chair of the math department at Textile High School from 1946 until 1952. He was also an active member of the New York Teachers' Union local of the American Federation of Teachers, and was drafted into a leadership role as a member of its executive board, chairman of the educational policy committee, and then as chairman of the salary and legislative committee.