Julia E. Diggins, who taught mathematics for many years in Washington, D.C., completed her under-graduate work in mathematics at Trinity College in Washington, and then attended the Catholic University of America, where she received an M.A. in psychology.

While teaching mathematics in junior high school, she was awarded grants by the National Science Foundation to attend courses at Rutgers University, Boston College, and the University of Maryland, where she worked with members of the Maryland University Mathematics Project on the preparation of a new curriculum. Subsequently she began to devote herself entirely to teaching "modern" mathematics for elementary school teachers at the University of Maryland.

Julia Diggins died in 1987.