Murray L. (Murray Lionel) Wax was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1922. He attended the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, attaining a Ph.D. in sociology and anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1959. After taking a position at Emory University, he and his wife, Rosalie directed a project studying the education of the Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota in 1962-63. He later directed several more projects, including an Indian Education Research Project (1965-68) and Project on Early Childhood Education among North American Indians (1967-68). In her book, Doing Fieldwork, published in 1971, Rosalie Wax describes her own and her husband's field experiences in South Dakota and Oklahoma among other locations.

After spending several years at the University of Kansas, Wax moved to Washington University in St. Louis in 1973, where he continued to teach as a professor in the department of Sociology. In 1993 he became a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology.

Murray Wax married Rosalie Amelia Hankey (born November 4, 1911 in Des Plaines, IL) in 1949. They had no children and were later divorced in June 1987. She earned her Ph. D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1950. Her fieldwork began in a Japanese internment camp at Tule Lake, California in 1944. Rosalie Wax died November 4, 1998. Murray Wax died November 10, 2012.