Nathaniel Gage
1917-Aug. 17, 2008
Stanford, California

Nathaniel Gage, 91, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education, died Aug. 17, 2008, at Stanford Hospital following surgery for a head injury he sustained in a fall.

He was born in Union City, N.J., in 1917, the second child of Polish immigrants who met and married in the United States. He attended City College of New York and the University of Minnesota and received a doctorate degree in psychology from Purdue University in 1947 after serving in the Army during World War II in an aviation psychology program to refine tests for pilots, navigators and radar observers.

He began his academic career at Purdue and then taught at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for 14 years before joining the Stanford faculty in 1962. He co-founded the Stanford Center for the Research and Development in Teaching in 1965. It was later renamed as the Center for Educational Research at Stanford.

He retired from teaching 20 years ago but still lived on campus and remained actively involved with the School of Education. He recently finished a book, "A Conception of Education," that will be published next year. Two earlier books outlined his theory of education: "The Scientific Basis of the Art of Teaching" (1978) and "Hard Gains in the Soft Sciences" (1985). Gage met his future wife, the late Margaret Burrows, when he was studying at Purdue. They married in 1942.

He is survived by his daughters, Sarah Gage and Annie Gage of Seattle, and Elizabeth Gage of Hollister; son, Timothy Gage of Sunnyvale; and three grandchildren.

Tags: veteran, teacher/educator