Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus) Bigelow

Maurice Alpheus Bigelow was an American educator and writer born in 1872 and remembered for his long career at Teachers College, Columbia University. Smithsonian records describe him as a professor of biology and later director of the Institute of Practical Science Research, serving there from 1899 to 1939.

He was active in both science teaching and public education. The Smithsonian credits him as a founder and editor of Nature Study Review and as a founder and secretary of the American Nature Study Society, showing how strongly he was involved in shaping nature-study and biology teaching in the early 1900s.

Bigelow is especially noted today for his books and lectures on sex education, including Sex-Education: A Series of Lectures Concerning Knowledge of Sex in Its Relation to Human Life (1916). That work grew out of lectures delivered at Teachers College and to wider public audiences, reflecting his belief that education could address subjects many people preferred to avoid.