Earl Francis Beach was born on March 13, 1912, in Chicago, Illinois, and died on May 17, 2002, in Waterloo, Ontario. He came to Canada in 1916, received his B.A. in economics in 1934 from Queen’s University, and his M.A. in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1938 from Harvard University. While a graduate student at Harvard, he became an instructor in Economics. In 1936, Beach became Assistant Professor at City College of New York. He was the director of the McGill School of Commerce from 1940 to 1945, and became Bronfman Professor of Commerce in 1946. From 1946 to 1948, Beach was the chair of the Social Studies and Commerce Group and from 1951 to 1954, was the chair of the Department of Economics and Political Science.