Physical Science Study Committee records

The Physical Science Study Committee, and its subsequent offshoots, Educational Services Incorporated (ESI) and Education Development Center (EDC), sought to achieve a comprehensive change in the teaching of science, particularly physics at its inception, in the secondary school system. The genesis of the original committee was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1956 with a project initiated by Jerrold Zacharias, James Killian, and Francis Friedman.

James Killian, MIT President (1948-1959), President Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for Science and Technology (1957-1959), and key developer of NASA, summarized the influence of this committee’s seminal work in his memoir, The Education of a College President: “Out of [the Physical Science Study Committee] was to come a revolutionary physics course for high schools, and in fact a curriculum reform movement with worldwide impact in which first-rate scholars in our universities turned their creative attention to the development of better teaching in precollege schools. I had the privilege of participating in this process by enthusiastically supporting Professor Zacharias’s initial concept and by running interference for him in launching and funding the PSSC program.”(1) The chapter in which this remark appears, “Trailbreaking in Education: Two Exemplars,” provides a wonderful account of the history of the Physical Science Study Committee.