Frank M. (Frank Morton) McMurry

Born in Indiana in 1862, Frank M. McMurry became an influential American educator, educational theorist, and author. He studied at the University of Michigan and later at Halle and Jena in Germany, earning a Ph.D. in 1889, and he became known as an early American advocate of Herbartian ideas in education.

McMurry taught at Illinois State University and later at Columbia University, where he built a reputation in teacher education. He is also associated with helping introduce the practice-teaching approach that later became widely known as student teaching, linking teacher preparation more closely to real classroom experience.

As a writer, he produced books that were both scholarly and practical, including How to Study and Teaching How to Study and, with collaborators, widely used geography texts and works on classroom method. He died in 1936, but his work remains a useful window into how modern ideas about teaching, study habits, and school organization took shape.