Benjamin Charles Gruenberg

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Benjamin Charles Gruenberg (1875–1965) was a Russian-born American biology teacher and writer who helped shape high school biology in New York and promoted sex education in the United States. He was born in Novoselytsia in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). After his Jewish parents moved to the United States, he earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Minnesota in 1896 and briefly worked as a sugar industry chemist before turning to teaching.

In 1902 Gruenberg began teaching biology in New York City public high schools. He married Sidonie Matsner in 1903; she studied child development and helped found the Child Study Association of America, later becoming a Fellow of the AAAS.

Gruenberg earned a master’s degree in genetics from Columbia University in 1908 and taught at Commercial High School. He received his PhD from Columbia in 1911 under Thomas Hunt Morgan and then taught at Julia Richman High School.

From 1920 he worked on sex education in U.S. schools through the Bureau of Education. He published a biology textbook on biology and human life in 1925 and was the managing editor for The American Teacher, which he helped found in 1911. In 1919 he wrote another biology textbook that combined botany and zoology and highlighted social applications. In 1925 he became a director of the American Association for Medical Progress, lectured widely, and wrote for both children and educators.

In 1929 Gruenberg became an editor for Viking Press and helped bring scientists’ books to general readers. Clarence Darrow asked him to testify as an expert witness in the Scopes trial, but an editor advised him not to get involved.