Dr. L. Clark Lay began his teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse in southern Iowa during the Great Depression. To better identify with the children in his classes, he often walked to school barefoot. During the summers he traveled to California and earned a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Southern California. This lead to his moving to California and teaching high school in El Centro and then junior college in Pasadena. It was at Pasadena City College that he first became interested in helping World War II veterans re-enter an academic world and become successful in algebra, calculus and higher math. These returning veterans were highly motivated, but their math skills were largely undeveloped. This caused a high failure rate in remedial courses in beginning algebra.
The math department surveyed existing arithmetic textbooks, but could find none whose goals specifically included preparing students for algebra. Convinced that such an approach was needed, Lay began a study of the kinds of mistakes that students commonly make in algebra. Then he looked for ways to develop thought patterns in arithmetic that would reduce those algebraic errors. His research was supported in 1952-3 by a fellowship from the Fund for Advancement of Education (Ford Foundation) and led to a doctor’s degree in mathematics education from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1959. The course he developed at Pasadena City College greatly increased the students’ chances for success in mathematics.
In 1960 he became the chairman of the newly formed department of mathematics education at California State University at Fullerton, where he trained elementary and middle school math teachers to understand a better way of teaching arithmetic. He also gained national prominence by serving on the Advisory Committee for the School Mathematics Study Group, a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded academic think tank focused on reform in math education. Prior to his retirement in 1975, he authored several books and conducted NSF sponsored summer institutes.
Even though Dr. L. Clark Lay died in 1998, he is listed as an author of the Prelude to Algebra text to honor his contributions to early forms of the book and to recognize that many of the unique concepts presented in the book were his original ideas.
Dr. Lay has two sons, both mathematicians. His older son David is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland. His younger son Steven has a similar position at Lee University in Tennessee. Both are accomplished authors like their father.
Other books by L. Clark Lay include Arithmetic, an Introduction to Mathematics (Macmillan, 1960), The Study of Arithmetic (Macmillan, 1966), From Arithmetic to Algebra (Macmillan, 1970), Principles of Elementary Mathematics (1973), and Principles of Algebra (1980, 1985, 1988, 1990).
Dr.
Steven R. Lay began teaching at Aurora University (Illinois) in 1971, after
earning a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles. He, too, wrestled with the question of how best to teach remedial algebra to
under-prepared college students. When his father retired in 1975 and moved to Illinois, they began a joint project of reworking and rewriting the material that had
proved so successful in California. This resulted in a new text, Principles
of Algebra, which they continued to revise and improve for a number of
years.
Steven Lay’s career in mathematics was interrupted for
8 years while serving as a Christian missionary in Japan. Upon his return to
the States in 1998, he joined the mathematics faculty at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Once again the need for a better remedial algebra
curriculum prompted him to adapt the text he and his father had developed in Illinois. This new version concentrated more on the transition between arithmetic and
algebra and less on algebra itself.
Both in Illinois and Tennessee as college students
used the Lays’ books, they often made comments such as: “For the first time in
my life, math makes sense to me.” “Why didn’t they explain it this way in
middle school?” or “You ought to write an 8th grade pre-algebra book
so that students can learn it right the first time.” Prelude to Algebra was a response to
those suggestions.
Steven and his wife Ann have two children. Their
daughter BethAnn taught 8th grade math for several years and now
teaches part-time at Lee University. Their son Tim is pursuing a Ph.D. in
history.
Other books by Steven R. Lay include Convex Sets
and their Applications (John Wiley and Sons, 1982, and Dover Publications,
2007), Analysis with an Introduction to Proof (Prentice Hall, 1986,
1990, 2001, 2005), Japanese Language and Culture (2003, 2004, 2006), and Principles of Algebra (1980, 1985, 1988, 1990, 2003, 2006).