WITNESS AT CREATION: I.C.P.E.'s FOUNDING AND
EARLY YEARS
William C. Kelly
Introduction
Dawn for the International Commission on Physics Education (ICPE)
occurred at astronomical sunset. In a pleasant, late spring evening
-- June 19, 1958, according to my notes -- Sanborn Brown and I
were returning to my office from dinner at a New York City restaurant,
deeply engrossed in the subject of our dinner-table conversation,
when it occurred to us that physics education lacked international
linkages. We had been talking about our responsibilities for the
American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), especially the
Committee on Apparatus for Educational Institutions, for which
he and I served as chairman and secretary respectively. As we
strolled across mid-town Manhattan, we realized that the U.S.
problems we had been discussing were problems in almost every
other country we knew anything about, but were almost never discussed
in an international setting. Could anything be done to remedy
this lack? We decided to try.
The present article is not a history of the Commission. Rather
it is the testimony of a witness to the founding of this international
body and an observer of its progress for fifteen years -- 1960
to 1975. During nine of those years I had an insider's seat.
These remarks are based on my memory -- admittedly fallible
-- and on my records -- unfortunately incomplete. Yet the reader
may find them interesting, supplementing as they do the more systematic
and complete treatments of the subject, such as French's fine
"short history" (1). Heeding the charge given to me
by the editor, I have tried to bring in the people involved in
these events as much as possible. The period to be discussed
is outlined in a short chronology (Table 1).
The State of Physics Education
The spring of 1958 was a time of opportunity in physics education.
The immediate post-World War II era, with its difficult problems
of reconverting to a civilian economy, accommodating to veteran-enrollment
surges, and rebuilding laboratories in war-damaged countries,
was largely behind us, but the Sputnik era had arrived. When
the Soviet Union had successfully launched the first Sputnik a
little over six months earlier, the achievement had produced a
profound shock throughout the world. Sending a satellite into
earth orbit was a more technological achievement than a scientific
one, of course, but in the mind of the public the two were indistinguishable.
As the United States and other industrialized countries rose
to the technological challenge, anxious questions were asked about
whether national manpower resources and education were adequate
in science and engineering. Many critics in the U.S. concluded
that they were not. Whether or not the logical connection between
the fact of the triumphantly signaling satellite overhead and
the state of science education below was flawless, many physicists
agreed with the critics. Some physicists were already working
on improvements in physics education: projects of the AAPT can
be cited, as well as the pioneering efforts of the Physical Science
Study Committee (PSSC) to reform secondary-school physics. So
Sputnik reinforced a concern and triggered national responses
that promised -- and eventually delivered -- greatly enhanced
resources for science educators, especially physicists. Opportunity
was knocking - or rather, beeping.
A second factor in the physics-education situation was that physics
itself was in a state of rapid and exciting growth of knowledge
and support. Far from "ladling knowledge from a stagnant
pool", physics teachers were hard pressed to keep up with
the sparkling new physics that cascaded over
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Table I. An ICPE Chronology: l958-l975
l958 Idea of an international conference on physics education,
June l9.
l959 Meeting of Organizing Committee, Konstanz, June 30.
l960 International Conference on Physics Education, Paris,
July 28-August 4.
IUPAP establishes Commission 14: Physics Education,
Ottawa, September 9
1963 International Conference on Physics in General Education,
Rio de Janeiro, July 1-6.
l965 International Conference on the Education of Professional
Physicists, London, July 15-21.
l966 Survey of the Teaching of Physics published, UNESCO.
l968 International Seminar on the Education of Physicists
for Work in Industry, Eindhoven, December 2-6.
l970 International Working Seminar on the Role of History of
Physics in Physics Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
July 13-17.
International Congress on the Education of Teachers of
Physics in Secondary Schools, Eger, September 11 - 17
1972 New Trends in Physics Teaching II published, UNESCO.
Source Book for Teaching School Physics published, UNESCO.
l975 International Conference on Physics Education, Edinburgh,
July 29-August 6.
=====================================================================
them and to incorporate it into their teaching. In every branch,
discoveries poured forth: quantum optics, condensed-matter physics,
nuclear physics, elementary-particle physics, relativity, astrophysics,
acoustics, applications of physics to medicine and the earth sciences,
the physics of the living cell. Financial support and public
esteem kept pace, not enough to satisfy all needs, but lavish
by earlier standards. Physics was "on a roll", and it
was an exciting time to be a physics teacher. There was a feeling
of confidence and pride in one's field, a sense of strong social
support, and an awareness of growing rapport between teaching
physicists and research physicists. As groups they had come together
as seldom before. The researchers wanted to transmit the new
knowledge; the teachers, to have help and not to be hesitant to
ask for it. An era of innovation and curricular reform began
in physics education that would witness changes in almost every
industrialized country and a striving for new levels of educational
achievement in the developing countries.
A third factor -- demographic change -- was still latent, but
would soon have a strong effect on physics education. In the
late 1950's, realization was growing that large increases in the
numbers of physics students lay ahead. The population surge that
followed World War II -- the "baby boom" -- had begun
to reach the secondary schools in the United States, and in the
early 1960's would reach the colleges and universities. In other
industrialized countries, the surge would be delayed for a few
years, but it was on the way there, too. Developing countries
knew all about population surges: their young people were already
waiting in line to be students. In the United States, from 1958
to 1968, total undergraduate enrollments would rise from 3.4 millions
to 6.7 millions; physics bachelor's degrees awarded annually would
increase from 3900 to 5500; and the annual number of physics doctorates
conferred would grow from 472 to 1325. Although the exact size
of the bulge in any one field, such as physics, could not be predicted
in 1958, its general consequences could be foreseen: lecture rooms
and laboratories would be crowded, more physics teachers would
be needed, new physics buildings would have to be constructed,
and text books and instructional apparatus would find a rising
market. Beyond all of this was the intellectual challenge of
teaching the new physics. Would physics be ready for these changes?
If the physics community was conceivably ready for international
discourse on educational problems, formal mechanisms for doing
so were not. To be sure, ideas about teaching had often been
shared when physicists from different countries met at research
conferences or held teaching appointments while on visits or as
exchange professors. Physics-education journals, such as the
American Journal of Physics, occasionally carried papers written
by physicists in other countries than those in which the journals
were published. Most national physics-teacher organizations,
such as AAPT, counted a few foreign colleagues among their members.
But no equivalent to the frequent international research conferences,
the active commissions of the International Union of Pure and
Applied Physics (IUPAP), or the international linkages generated
thereby existed in physics education. The international organizations
were not averse to physics education; they had just not considered
it. The question that Sanborn Brown and I were about to pose
about the desirability and feasibility of an international conference
on physics education had apparently not been asked.
The Impetus toward ICPE
The officers and the Executive Board of AAPT were briefed in the months immediately following that June evening. Consultation was facilitated by Brown's position as treasurer of AAPT. The Association's reception to the idea was cordial. Although many questions needed to be answered
satisfactorily about logistics before final decisions could be
made, AAPT opinions were favorable. The reaction of the American
Institute of Physics (AIP), where I was serving as staff officer
for education, also was favorable. AIP endorsement would encourage
the support of the other Member Societies, and Elmer Hutchisson,
the AIP director, could play a key personal role in promoting
the education conference. He was not only a national leader in
physics in the U.S., but also a well-known international figure
because of his prominent role in physics-journal publication,
abstracting, and documentation throughout the world. When we
told him about our idea, "Hutch" responded with enthusiasm
and energy. He began writing to colleagues in other countries
and especially to the leaders of IUPAP, to whom he was well known.
Brown also wrote to colleagues. He was already internationally
visible in his field of plasma physics; he served as a U.S. delegate
to the Second U.N. Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy
and to the IAEA conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Thermonuclear
fusion. My own role in the early activities was to provide an
informal secretariat at AIP that supported the initiative.
By the following summer, the initiative had been transferred to
an ad hoc organizing committee. It met in Konstanz, Germany,
on June 30, 1959, to outline plans for an international conference
on physics education in 1960 and to elect a chairman and a secretary.
Those attending the meeting were S.C. Brown (U.S.), Norman Clarke
(U.K.), P. Fleury (France), E. Hutchison (U.S.), T. Kinbara (Japan),
W. Kroebel (Germany), E. Persico (Italy),and L. Weil (France).
Brown was elected chairman of the committee and Clarke secretary.
Good liaison with IUPAP was ensured by having Fleury, the Union's
secretary-general, as a member. The task of this pioneering group
set for itself at Konstanz and carried out in the event so successfully
is best described in the words of the chairman and secretary (2):
"This committee laid down the plans for the
Conference, including topics to be discussed, methods of selecting
delegates, exhibitions of teaching aids, and the most desirable
place for the Conference to be held. The guiding principles agreed
on were the following. The Conference should be given over largely
to discussion, and should cover the whole range of physics education.
So that real discussion should be possible, it was decided that
the Conference should, if possible, be limited to 80 to 100 people,
and the size of each delegation should be based very broadly on
the number of contributory units donated to the International
Union of Pure and Applied Physics, this being taken as a rough
measure of the development of physics and physics teaching in
the countries concerned. To stimulate formal discussion, formal
papers would be submitted to the secretary before the Conference,
to be printed and circulated at least a month before the Conference
convened. UNESCO HOUSE in Paris was the preferred location because
of the simultaneous translation facilities there."
The work got under way with agonizing slowness in view of the
size of the task of preparing for this first-time international
meeting and the nearness of the proposed date of summer, 1960.
On October 12, 1959, Brown, Clarke, Fleury, Weil (representing
OEEC, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation), and
V.A. Kovda and Hilliard Roderick (both representing UNESCO) met
in Paris to work on the arrangements. Roderick was asked to join
the organizing committee. Financial aid was discussed. IUPAP,
OEEC, UNESCO, and several national science organizations, such
as the National Science Foundation in the U.S., subsequently agreed
to provide direct support, and various other organizations, such
as the British Institute of Physics and the AAPT and AIP, to provide
logistical support. A subcommittee for exhibits of apparatus,
books, and films was formed, consisting of A. Marechal (France),
W.C. Kelly (U.S.), G.R. Noakes(U.K.), and G. Saada (France).
On November 26, UNESCO formally agreed to co-sponsor and support
the Conference and to make the excellent conference facilities
at UNESCO House in Paris available to it. IUPAP lent its sponsorship
and financial support, announced the Conference, and invited expressions
of interest from the thirty-four IUPAP member countries; by the
end of May, 1960, twenty countries had declared an intention to
participate and to send about a hundred delegates. (The final
count would be twenty-eight countries and eighty-six delegates.)
The papers and provisional program were transmitted to delegates
on July 8, and the International Conference on Physics Education
took place on July 28 to August 4, 1960, in Paris at UNESCO House.
Ample details about the Conference will be found in the proceedings
(2) and in French's excellent paper (1). I will add here only
a few personal comments as a participant in the Conference and
as an observer of the long train of events that followed from
it. The first is that enthusiasm, support, and level of involvement
were extraordinarily high. People and organizations seemed to
realize that this would be an historic occasion -- the opening
of a new era of communication in physics education -- and they
acted accordingly. Obtaining funds for the Conference was not
difficult. Some ú7584 British pounds were raised in direct
contributions, but that must be taken as a lower bound of support,
not including the many forms of assistance in kind or support
of travel costs of individuals by their home institutions. Most
of the delegates were prominent figures in physics and were both
nationally and internationally known. Many of them will appear
later in this article as active participants in what became the
Commission. The Conference produced many new friendships and collegial
ties. The papers were not always interesting, but a high percentage
of them were, illuminating a wide range of problems confronting
physics education and identifying what subsequently became agenda
for the Commission. The problem of achieving useful discourse
about educational problems in countries with different kinds of
educational systems proved to be not so difficult as it first
had appeared. A few interesting ideas and models for educational
change emerged and took on an international vitality that went
beyond the Conference limits -- the PSSC comes to mind. PSSC
activities were approaching a climax in 1960, and the presentation
of the PSSC program for secondary schools by means of talks and
exhibits at the Conference had a profound effect on many delegates.
The model of close cooperation between "research physicists"
and "teaching physicists" in PSSC was especially impressive
and is believed to have stimulated such projects as the Nuffield
Project and others worldwide. The Conference exhibits, both those
by commercial companies and those by universities and associations,
were extensive and generally of good quality. The exhibitors
outdid themselves in sending their products, some of which were
excellent, a few of which needed to be retired, but all backing
up the discourse that went on in the conference halls. Finally,
dissemination of the results of the Conference by publication
of its proceedings was handled efficiently by the writing team
of Brown and Clarke, who retired to a quiet retreat -- The Swann
Inn at Streatley-on-Thames in England -- surrounded themselves
with papers, tape recorders and typists, and did not emerge until
the manuscript had been completed. My notes indicate that they
delivered the manuscript to the publisher on August 30, 1960,
and that printed copies of the proceedings were available on January
6, 1961. This brisk style of preparing proceedings was followed
at several later ICPE conferences and always seemed to me to be
a good way of solving an otherwise troublesome problem.
ICPE Is Established
The delegates recommended that continuing activity of the kind
exemplified by the Paris Conference be provided for within IUPAP:
"We recommend to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics that it should take appropriate action, possibly in collaboration with other international organizations, to establish an international committee of professional physicists to accept responsibility for:
1. The collection, evaluation, and coordination of information and the stimulation of experiments at all levels of physics education.
2. The suggesting of ways in which the facilities for the study of physics at all levels might be improved in various countries.
3. The collection and evaluation of information on methods used for the assessment of standards of performance of students of physics and for the evaluation of the qualifications and effectiveness of teachers of physics.
4. The giving of help to teachers in incorporating modern knowledge in their courses.
5. The promotion of the exchange of information and ideas among
all countries by methods that would include the holding of international
conferences.
III. We ask our Chairman, Professor Sanborn C. Brown, to accept
on our behalf the invitation of the Secretary-General of the International
Union of Pure and Applied Physics to attend the Ottawa meeting
of the General Assembly of the Union, to present the resolutions
and recommendations of this Conference, of which the Union was
one of the sponsors, and in particular to ask the Union to accept
the responsibility proposed in Resolution II."(2)
Sanborn Brown did attend the Tenth General Assembly (Ottawa, l960)
and on September 9, 1960, IUPAP approved the establishment of
Commission 14: Physics Education. It entered the ranks of IUPAP
Commissions in the company of two other new Commissions: Nuclidic
Masses and Atomic Constants, and Low Energy Nuclear Physics. To
my knowledge, no opposition was expressed to this action within
the General Assembly. Discussion centered on who and how. The
successful holding of the Paris Conference had anticipated and
answered any questions of feasibility and interest. What the
outcome would have been if the events had been reversed and Commission
status had been requested before the Conference was held is problematical;
the outcome would have been harder to predict. But IUPAP had conferred
its distinguished cachet on physics education, and that area of
interest was now a certified concern of the physics community
worldwide. International physics education had arrived.
"Who?" was answered by IUPAP's appointment of the following members of the Commission on Physics Education for 1960 to 1963: Sanborn Brown (U.S.), chairman; Norman Clarke (U.K.),secretary; P. Fleury (France); V.S. Fursov (U.S.S.R.); A.M.J.F. Michels (Netherlands); D. Sette (Italy); and J. Tiomno (Brazil). M.A. El-Sherbini (Egypt) and M. Valouch (Czechoslovakia) were named corresponding members. Fursov, Tiomno, and Valouch had not attended the Paris conference; the others all had, and Brown, Clarke, and Fleury, of course, had been three of the principal organizers.
"How?" was less easily answered, but IUPAP made available from its limited funds a small amount of travel money to help the Commission meet. A slight surplus from the Paris conference would also be available. For the rest, the Commission would be expected to make its way financially, as did all of the other Commissions, by soliciting funds to support its program activities.
Its success as a Commission would depend in large part on the
ingenuity with which its officers and members met this requirement.
The outcome proved that such talents were not lacking in ICPE,
but fund-raising turned out to be a major problem. It showed up
early as the Commission began to plan its first international
conference.
Early ICPE Leaders
Before turning to the Rio Conference, I want to describe briefly
the kind of leaders that IUPAP provided for its new Commission.
Sanborn Conner Brown (3) -- "Sandy" as he was called
by everyone who knew him for more than a few minutes -- combined
high stature as a physicist and teacher, wide interests, capability
for sustained work and great efficiency in organizing himself
and others, and an engaging personality. He had been born in
1913 in Beirut, Lebanon, of U.S.-citizen parents; his father was
a professor of physics and later dean at the American University
in that city in a happier time than the present. Sandy came to
the United States for the latter part of his schooling, majored
in physics as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, and then went to
MIT for his Ph.D., which he received in 1944. His doctoral dissertation
was on the subject of Geiger-Müller counters. When I first
heard that, since I had worked with G-M counters myself as a graduate
student, the origin of Sandy's ability to master complicated,
crotchety social systems immediately became clear. He was appointed
to the faculty at MIT where he rose through the ranks, becoming
professor of physics in 1962. His research interests were in gaseous
electronics and plasma physics, where he made many contributions,
personally organizing a research program to produce microwave
cavity discharges and study the resultant ionized gas. Some fifty
graduate students and other researchers passed through his laboratory
during the eighteen years of its peak activity. His interest in
good teaching displayed itself early in his academic career. In
the early 1950's, he led an effort to overhaul the undergraduate
physics laboratories at MIT, replacing outmoded traditional experiments
by modern-physics ones. These interests brought him into contact
with AAPT. I referred above to two of the many AAPT offices he
held. He also served as a member of the school board in his home
town of Lexington, Massachusetts. Sandy became interested in
the history of physics as an undergraduate, specifically in the
career of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. He later dug deeply
into the sources and published extensively on Rumford over a period
of several decades, receiving international recognition, including
election as a Fellow of the Royal Institution, for his scholarly
work in that field. He also wrote a popular book on Rumford and
even built a set of fascinating little models of Rumford's experiments
-- the cannon drilling experiment, an improved fireplace, etc.
Around the time that he became associate graduate dean at MIT
in 1963, Sandy turned his attention to science-policy issues.
One of these was the need to recognize that postdoctoral appointments
in science -- at least as practiced in the United States - had
become a whole new stage of academic research and career development,
deserving greater attention by the faculty. He served as chairman
of a committee of the National Research Council that carried out
the first comprehensive study of postdoctorals. After his retirement
in l975 and near the end of his life, Sandy devoted much time
to the affairs of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science,
a group of scientists and clergy who sought a scientific basis
for humanity's sense of good and evil. As evidence that he had
not lost interest in lighter issues also, he wrote and published
a book on brewing in colonial America, based, I understand, on
basement experiments.
Brown pursued so many different interests that his contribution
to ICPE, considerable as it was, was only an episode. He was driven,
but apparently by a sense of noble purpose and good will, not
by the need to prove himself. He possessed great stores of energy
and was well organized and highly efficient. For example, he answered
his voluminous correspondence promptly, often dictating replies
into a tape recorder as he drove between his home in Lexington
and the MIT campus. He had help, of course. This biographical
note would be incomplete without acknowledging the part that Lois
Wright Brown, his wife, played in his life. Participants in early
ICPE conferences were so used to seeing Lois at those meetings,
helping in many ways, that her presence was almost a sine qua
non.
Norman Clarke, the ICPE's first secretary, brought great resources
to the task from his position as education officer of the Institute
of Physics and the Physical Society in London and from his earlier
experience in the improvement of physics and mathematics teaching
in Britain. The former gave him many international contacts, a
first-hand knowledge of manpower problems in physics in a major
industrialized country, and a secure base of operations; the latter
provided wide knowledge and sharp insights into teaching problems
in physics at every level. His diligent and skillful handling
of the affairs of the ICPE office during these crucial years was
an important factor in the young Commission's survival. He and
Brown worked closely and amicably together -- another important
plus for ICPE. The contribution of the British Institute of Physics
to international education must also be acknowledged: by making
available Clarke's time and office support it conferred no small
benefit on ICPE.
Pierre Fleury, the senior member of ICPE, came to the Commission
near the end of a long and productive period of service to IUPAP.
A professor in the Institut d'Optique in Paris, he served as
IUPAP's third Secretary-General from 1947 to 1963. Citing his
services in the fiftieth-anniversary volume of IUPAP (4), the
Union declared [in translation]:
"Professor Fleury attended the meeting in Brussels in
l922 [IUPAP's founding year]. He was part of the French delegation
in l972. He did not fail to render service to the Union during
any of these fifty years."
Having strong educational interests as well as an influential
post within the Union, Fleury was a key figure in the organization
of the Paris Conference and in the action by IUPAP conferring
Commission status on physics education. As we shall see later,
Fleury was also one of the prime movers in launching a science-education
committee within the International Council of Scientific Unions
and served as its first secretary. He was well-connected in the
world of international science and had easy entree into organizations
such as UNESCO. Fleury was of the older generation of physicists,
but -- attentive, optimistic, urbane, ready with suggestions --
he mixed easily with his ICPE colleagues. He was not a gifted
linguist, however, and usually made his interventions in rapid,
formal French in meetings in which everyone else was speaking
colloquial English. This caused some problems for chairmen, but
when everything was sorted out, the speeches Fleury gave turned
out to make highly useful points -- sometimes the most important
points -- for the discussion.
Daniele Sette, professor of physics at the Instituto di Fisica of the University of Rome, played a long and productive role in the Commission. An acoustical physicist, he took a prominent part in the discussions at the Paris Conference. He was appointed to the first Commission in l960 and served as a member until l969, after which he was a corresponding member, with no diminution of his contributions, until l972. Sette brought to the Commission a wealth of experience and knowledge of education gained both in Italy and internationally in a wide variety of physics-education projects. In discussion at Commission meetings, he could be counted on to seize an idea, judge it for its soundness as education and physics, and carry it into the realm of the practical
by making helpful comments, suggestions, and caveats. He was a
pragmatist who knew the world, but who also understood the importance
of holding firmly to good basic principles of education and organizational
conduct.
Jayme Tiomno of the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas played
a key role in organizing ICPE's International Conference on Physics
Education in l963, as will be related below.
A.M.J.F. Michels of the University of Amsterdam contributed to
the work of the Commission an awareness of the important place
of physics in general education, a zeal for seeing that that role
was effectively played, and an uncompromising insistence on high
educational standards. He and his wife, C.A. Michels-Veraart,
who was also a teacher, were major figures in the General Education
Conference of l963.
V.S. Fursov of the Soviet Union was apparently unable to be an
active member and was replaced by A.S. Akhmatov (U.S.S.R.) at
the end of l963.
M. Valouch was a faithful participant in ICPE meetings and conferences
from l960 into the early l970s when ill health forced him to withdraw.
I was not acquainted with M.A. El-Sherbini, who was a corresponding
member from 1960 to 1966.
The Conference on Physics in General Education
The team that has organized the Paris Conference began to face
in l961, as an IUPAP Commission, the task of creating a three-year
program of activities in international physics education. Meeting
in Paris on April 24-26,l961, and in Amsterdam on May 2-4, l962,
the Commission developed its priorities, considered its resources,
and planned the first of the ICPE-sponsored conferences -- the
International Conference on Physics in General Education, held
in Rio de Janeiro on July l-6, l963. In doing so, ICPE heeded
the call of the Paris Conference to restrict the range of topics
to be discussed at future conferences. It took essentially one
chapter of the Paris report and expanded it into the program of
a full conference. It also recognized the importance of regional
development of physics education by holding the Conference in
a major Latin-American country. Interest in physics education
in Brazil was keen, and several international organizations --
notably UNESCO -- were providing resources for physics education
projects in Latin America. An international conference on the
problems of improving physics teaching at the base of education
could clearly do a great deal of good.
In spite of these favorable signs, organizing the Conference was not easy. The major problem was money. The enthusiasm and team spirit of l959-60, which had gotten the Paris Conference off the ground, seemed to have abated, leaving the Commission with a limited range of options and sponsors. UNESCO took a long time to make up its mind before deciding in December, l962, to be a sponsor and provide a modest subvention. As late as the end of April, l963, UNESCO found it necessary to cancel its plans to support the exhibits at the Conference. Inspite of the hard work of Tiomno and his Brazilian colleagues on the local organizing committee, local support was limited to space and hospitality. It was difficult to obtain travel funds for speakers from other countries, whose contributions were needed to make the Conference a success. In a crisis atmosphere not unfamiliar to planners of international conferences, "planning" meetings were held as late as May, l963.
In the end, the arrangements worked out reasonably well, and the Conference was held successfully in the Palacio da Cultura in Rio de Janeiro with some 170 participants from twenty-eight countries in attendance.(5) The Brazilian contingent, of course, was the largest: the presence of so many Brazilian teachers and school officials, all clearly fascinated by what was going on, created a sense of special purpose at the Conference. International attendance was stimulated by the
holding of the Interamerican Conference on Physics Education on
the same spot the previous week under the auspices of the Organization
of American States. This made it possible for funding organizations
to support the travel of many Latin Americans to Rio de Janeiro
for both conferences: the OAS conference, which was global in
topic, but geographically focused; and the ICPE conference, which
had a more limited theme, but worldwide representation. Another
major contribution to the success of both Rio conferences was
the wholehearted support given by the Latin-American Center for
Physics (CLAF).
I attended both of the conferences and came away with a feeling
that the time had been well spent. Gerald Holton and Eric Rogers,
two of the speakers, were in good form at the ICPE Conference
and gave excellent talks. Jerrold Zacharias spoke on curriculum
reform in the U.S., describing accomplishments of the PSSC; he
had many interesting things to report to a fascinated audience.
Other talks were also good. Some speakers floundered, however,
in attempting to deal with "general education." There
were enough problems of the latter kind to make credible the concern
expressed openly by Richard Feynman who said he doubted whether
anyone yet knew enough about teaching physics to nonspecialists
to justify discussing the subject on an international basis. It
was a sticky subject, and ICPE showed courage in taking
it on as its first conference topic.
The Survey of the Teaching of Physics at Universities
This project was first proposed to ICPE by UNESCO in January,
l961. It was accepted by the Commission about a year later, produced
a composite international manuscript by the autumn of l963, and
was published as a 400-page report by UNESCO in l966. The purpose
of the Survey was to provide a factual basis, accompanied by informed
comment, for judging the similarities and differences of national
systems for physics teaching in six industrialized countries:
Czechoslovakia, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the U.S.S.R.,
the U.K., and the U.S.A. UNESCO's interest in this study derived
primarily from its desire to provide models of physics education
for consideration by developing countries. The survey procedure,
as developed by ICPE and UNESCO, was to appoint a "national
author" in each of the six countries to investigate in as
much detail as possible the teaching of physics in that country,
from the earliest presentation of elements of physics in schools
through graduate study in physics. Each national author then wrote
an essay with voluminous appendices, all of which material was
compiled into an international report by a "coordinator".
ICPE monitored the work and ensured that it met suitable standards.
The national authors were M. Valouch (Czechoslovakia), W. Hanle
(Germany), M.Y. Bernard (France), A.S. Akhmatov (U.S.S.R.), Norman
Clarke (U.K.), and W.C. Kelly (U.S.). I also served as the coordinator.
This enterprise, in spite of familiar difficulties of international communications and educational incongruities, achieved a modest success. The format the authors adopted -- sitting as an editorial committee -- allowed the masses of factual information gathered to be juxtaposed well enough to
allow an attentive reader to make the desired comparisons. The
accompanying comments were sufficiently judicious to allow mild
quality judgments to be made. The reader was given a basis for
deciding whether this method or that better fitted the model he
was constructing. These evaluative comments were reinforced by
a final chapter on the improvement of physics teaching, in which
the authors made it clear that there were still a few educational
problems to be solved. The Survey enabled ICPE to respond to its
mandate for the "collection, evaluation, and coordination
of information". The authors and a few readers learned a
lot about comparative education. The report can still be read
profitably, but it is not light bed-time reading.
Other Early Activities, l960-l966
The formative years saw another major ICPE conference and several
other kinds of Commission activities. The International Conference
on the Education of Professional Physicists was held in London
on July 15-21, l965. Some 93 delegates, representing 26 countries,
attended. Unlike the preceding one in Rio, this conference dealt
with a subject at the heart of the profession, a subject well
understood by the physics community, and was held in a locale
close to ICPE's base of operations. It could have been expected
to encounter fewer difficulties of organization and execution,
and this apparently was so. I was not able to attend and can add
little to what is in the published report (7). One of the issues
that was debated vigorously at the London Conference -- the proper
education of physicists for work in industry -- was not disposed
of for all time, however; it continued to stimulate discussion
afterwards and was revisited by the Commission several years later.
In addition to holding the London Conference, ICPE sent out feelers
in several directions, some of which led to significant educational
enterprises, others of which were not productive. One of the successful
ventures was the ICPE initiative in proposing to the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) that it set up an Interunion
Commission on Science Education to allow representatives of a
growing number of education commissions of the different scientific
Unions -- physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, etc. --
to meet, work on transdisciplinary educational problems, and coordinate
their efforts. ICSU responded positively, establishing the Interunion
Commission in September, l961. P. Fleury was appointed its secretary,
and Sanborn Brown served as a member. The Interunion Commission
was converted into the ICSU Committee on the Teaching of Science
in l968 -- to ensure more active participation by the Unions and
more direct support by ICSU -- under which title it continues
to this day. One of its interests has been the teaching of "integrated
science", a subject on which it has organized a number of
international conferences. An ICPE representative, usually the
chairman or the secretary, has usually been a member of this committee.
The association has been generally of benefit to both organizations,
although ICPE has sometimes worried that the ICSU committee was
competing too successfully for the educational funds of UNESCO.
Another project by ICPE that saw later results was the effort
to improve international communications among physics teachers
by instituting an international newsletter. Its first effort was
to stimulate and then to assist AIP to publish International
News of Physics Education. This was a four-page bilingual
(French and English) newsletter that gathered information world
wide about physics education projects and reported it quarterly,
reaching about 1100 readers, the majority of them in the United
States. At the end of its "funding lifetime" of about
a year and a half, the newsletter went out of existence in l967.
About a decade later, as we shall see, an ICPE newsletter was
successfully launched with UNESCO support and a more international
readership and has managed to keep going. On another front, ICPE
was involved in successful efforts to solicit AAPT donation of
copies of its journals to developing countries through UNESCO
channels. Other information initiatives by the early Commission
did not succeed: a proposal for an international journal of physics
education was explored and dropped -- largely for economic
reasons -- and efforts to encourage Physics Abstracts to give
greater coverage to educational articles in physics seem to have
had only a transitory effect.
Other ICPE activities included: advising UNESCO on its publication
program in physics education (see below) and on other UNESCO education
projects, appointing representatives to various international
educational organizations, and discussing with the International
Commission on Mathematical Instruction the possibility of cosponsoring
a conference on the coordination of the teaching of physics and
mathematics.
Changing of the Guard
By the time of the Twelfth IUPAP General Assembly (Basel, l966),
several of the ICPE members, including its chairman, believed
it was time for a new group to take over the Commission's responsibilities.
Almost all of the present members has served for six years, and
new leadership and the rotation of membership seemed desirable.
The General Assembly accepted this recommendation and appointed
the following: H.H. Staub (Switzerland), chairman; William C.
Kelly (U.S.), secretary; H.B.G. Casimir (Netherlands); W. Schaffer
(South Africa); D. Sette (Italy); P. Fleury (France); and A.S.
Akhmatov (U.S.S.R.). The following were named corresponding members:
A. Harasima (Japan), W. Kroebel (West Germany), M. Pihl (Denmark),
John Lewis (U.K.), M. Valouch (Czechoslovakia), and L. Pal (Hungary).
Hans Staub, the Commission's second chairman, was born in l908 in Switzerland and educated there, receiving his doctorate in physics from the E.T.H. in l933. He was a fortunate choice as chairman, representing the very best of the tradition of physics research and university teaching. He had the complete confidence of IUPAP, having served on several of its other commissions previously. He had been an active participant in the l960 Paris Conference. Staub knew the world scene from the many international currents that could be observed in his home country and from a long period of residence in the United States. There he taught at Caltech and Stanford, became a staff member at Los Alamos during World War II, and returned to Stanford afterwards as a professor. Among the scientific achievements mentioned by Felix Bloch (8) in his obituary notice about Staub were Staub's contributions to understanding the scattering of neutrons on helium and their polarization in passage through magnetized iron, improvements in particle detectors, and measurements of the neutron magnetic moment, including its sign, with high accuracy. In l949, Staub returned to Switzerland where he became the director of the Physics Institute at the University of Zurich. According to Bloch, Staub "brought the Institute to modern standards, not only by installing a Van De Graaff accelerator in an excellent new building, but also by inspiring his colleagues and students with the free spirit of inquiry. His lectures were distinguished by the same lucid presentation that one finds in the textbook on atomic physics he wrote with Paul Huber." This combination of eminence in research and teaching, administrative experience, wide international acquaintance, and absolute integrity was put to good use by Staub in carrying out his ICPE responsibilities. His integrity was probably what impressed his colleagues most. Staub was a democratic chairman, presiding genially over what was sometimes a random-walk kind of discussion and letting everyone have his say. But whenever a matter of principle arose, whether one of good physics, good teaching, or good conduct, Staub was forthright and unequivocal. He expressed himself without niceties or glossing over the issues, saying what he thought was right. His fellow members knew that they had had "the word", and they never had occasion to regret having accepted it. Staub kept the Commission out of trouble that it might have encountered under a less astute and honest chairman.
I do not intend to draw a picture of an austere and distant leader.
Hans was a friendly person, a warm personality, approachable and
possessed of a wry sense of humor. He worked hard at the chairmanship
and was always available, but was not given to overloading the
mails with instructions. Like his pronouncements at meetings,
his letters and cablegrams came when they were needed.
W.C. Kelly, the new secretary, has appeared before in this story,
but now, unlike the days when he was on the sidelines, he was
near the center of the Commission's work. Like all secretaries,
he would have to bear the responsibility of seeing that ICPE affairs
ran smoothly under the chairman's leadership and with as much
democratic process and diplomacy as possible. By way of background:
born in 1922 in Pittsburgh, Kelly at the time of his election
was associate director -- and would soon become the director --
of the Office of Scientific Personnel of the National Research
Council (NRC) in Washington. The NRC is an organization that begins
to take shape in the mind of the reader if one explains that it
is the "action arm" of the National Academy of Sciences
and the National Academy of Engineering. One of ten major sections
of the NRC, the Office of Scientific Personnel conducts research
fellowship programs (both predoctoral and postdoctoral) and makes
studies of needs and supplies of manpower in science and engineering,
including physics. Earlier, from l957 to l965, Kelly had been
the director of the department of education and manpower of the
American Institute of Physics during its formative years and had
worked on many different AAPT and AIP projects for the improvement
of physics teaching. Still earlier, l943-l957, he had taught and
carried on research in beta-ray spectroscopy at the University
of Pittsburgh, where he had received the doctorate in physics
in l951. He was the co-author of several widely used physics textbooks
at the high-school and college levels.
While it was to be hoped that this experience and various personal
qualities were factors in Kelly's election as secretary, it was
clear that his position in an organization that had the means
to support ICPE activities was not a trivial consideration. Here
it is a pleasure to acknowledge the considerable assistance that
the National Research Council gave ICPE during the nine years
of my tenure as secretary and chairman. It was provided at every
level. The two presidents of the National Academy of Sciences
who served during this time -- Frederick Seitz and Philip Handler
-- were very supportive. The staff of my office accomplished
the typing, copying, and other tasks of keeping ICPE running:
Shirley Davis, Irene Matthews, and Kathleen Drennan are names
that should be remembered in this regard. The Business Office
under B.L. Kropp helped keep ICPE financial records straight.
The extent of the NRC subvention was never completely added up,
but it was considerable.
H.B.G. Casimir, another new member, needs no introduction to physicists.
Well known for his contributions to physics in the most exciting
years of the quantum revolution, he had gone on to the leadership
of research and development at Philips Research Laboratories in
Eindhoven and to senior statesmanship in physics internationally.
His autobiography (9) gives ample evidence of the many talents
he brought to his participation in ICPE affairs. The Commission's
successful Seminar on the Education of Physicists for Work in
Industry, held in l968 in Eindhoven, was Casimir's principal contribution
to the ICPE program, but his comments at Commission meetings --
always models of clarity, succinctness, and penetration -- were
added benefits for his colleagues. His joining the Commission
added a very important kind of representation also in that he
came from industry, bringing a perspective that is very much needed
in discussions of physics education and that is not always present.
W. Schaffer, professor of physics at the University of Cape Town,
also joined the Commission at this time and contributed an acumen
and a richness of academic experience that served ICPE well.
A.S. Akhmatov, who had joined the Commission in l963 as a replacement
for V.S. Fursov, was a professor at the Moscow Institute of Machines
and Instruments. He had served as the author for the U.S.S.R.
in the UNESCO-ICPE survey of the teaching of physics at universities.
Of the new corresponding members, A. Harasima of the International
Christian University in Tokyo was an astute observer of physics
education worldwide and an attentive participant in ICPE conferences
and meetings from the earliest years; W. Kroebel of the University
of Kiel, who had served as a member of the Organizing Committee
for the Paris Conference, was one of ICPE's founding fathers;
John Lewis of Malvern College became my successor as secretary
in l972; and L. Pal of the Physics Institute in Budapest was most
helpful to ICPE in the organization of the International Congress
on the Education of Teachers of Physics in Secondary Schools.
While we are on the subject of the ICPE membership, it should
be noted that further changes in the membership took place in
l969, and the individuals appointed then participated in the work
described below during l969 to l972. They were as follows: Staub
and Kelly continued as chairman and secretary respectively; Schaffer
continued as a member; W. Kroebel (West Germany), John Lewis (U.K.),
M.Y. Bernard (France), L.S. Kothari (India), A.N. Matveyev (U.S.S.R.),
and J. Werle (Poland) became members; and H.B.G. Casimir (Netherlands),
P. Fleury (France), A. Harasima (Japan), E. Nagy (Hungary), D.
Sette (Italy), and M. Valouch (Czechoslovakia) were named corresponding
members.
Bernard, professor of physics at the Conservatoire National des
Arts et Metiers in Paris, was well known to the Commission for
his work as the author for France in the survey of the teaching
of physics at universities; his later career included important
assignments in the science ministries of the French Government.
Kothari was a member of the Department of Physics and Astrophysics
at the University of Delhi and had been active in the reform of
physics education in India. Matveyev's earlier contacts with the
Commission had occurred when he held the post of Deputy Assistant
Director-General for Science at UNESCO; at the time of his appointment
to ICPE he was professor of physics at the Moscow State University.
Werle, of the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Warsaw
University, was especially interested in the relationship between
physics and mathematics and took a prominent role in the Commission's
exploration of the problems in that area. Nagy, professor of
physics at Eötvös University in Budapest, carried out
two major assignments for the Commission: serving as chairman
of the organizing committee for the International Congress on
the Education of Teachers of Physics in Secondary Schools and
as editor-in-chief of Volume II of UNESCO's New Trends in
Physics Teaching.
New Lamps for Old
The first meeting of the newly reconstituted Commission in Zurich
on April 3-5, l967, was the occasion for a widely ranging discussion
of what ICPE had been doing, what new educational problems had
emerged in recent years, and what the agenda for the next several
years should be. One of the principal decisions was to abandon
"sequential planning". Rather, having identified six
areas in which international conferences on special topics in
physics education seemed to be needed, ICPE would describe each
of them in a "prospectus" and give all six circulation
among the IUPAP National Committees at one time. This would not
only make available to ICPE the opinions of a large segment of
the world physics community, but would also allow parallel development
of plans for several of the most widely favored conferences at
the same time. Another decision, made largely at Casimir's suggestion,
was to encourage the holding of smaller meetings -- "seminars"
or "workshops" -- on specialized topics on which the
discussion of a group of 50-60 experts would be more productive
than that of a conference group of over a hundred.
The three topics proposed for general conferences were the education
of teachers of physics in secondary schools, the role of physics
in the education of the non-physicist specialist (engineer, chemist,
biologist, physician), and an open meeting of university physics
teachers. The three proposed seminars were on physics and mathematics,
the education of the physicist for work in industry, and physics
education and the history of physics. Following the Zurich meeting,
write-ups describing each of these meeting in rough outline were
prepared and sent to the thirty-seven National Committees, a goodly
number of which subsequently replied, prioritizing the topics
and in a few cases expressing interest in being the hosts. At
the same time, ICPE inquired directly of suitable host institutions
and, after about a year of this kind of effort, had plans well
under way for holding several of these meetings. Eventually, four
of the six conferences and seminars were held; only the "open
meeting of university teachers" and the "seminar on
physics and mathematics" did not take place. However, there
are currently some signs of a revival of interest in the "open
meeting", and ICPE has joined from time to time in international
meetings involving all the sciences and mathematics to discuss
the science/mathematics relationship.
At the Zurich meeting, UNESCO was represented by Albert V. Baez,
director of the Division of Science Teaching, who described UNESCO's
plans in physics education and invited ICPE's cooperation. A
number of joint publishing ventures were discussed, some of which
came to fruition in the years following. UNESCO also offered
its assistance in the holding of international meetings, although
it was clear the UNESCO priorities were already working against
support for such meetings.
So the Commission was launched on a new round of activities --
some new, some previously explored, most of them timeless. Since
the conferences, seminars, and special publishing projects are
represented by published documents in the physics literature,
I shall confine my remarks here to certain aspects that I found
interesting, remarks that may throw light into a few dark corners.
Conferences and Seminars, l966-l972
With Casimir serving as chairman of the organizing committee and
the Philips Research Laboratories and the Technological University
of Eindhoven as host institutions, worldwide interest in the International
Seminar on the Education of Physicists for Work in Industry (Eindhoven,
December 2-6, l968) was a foregone conclusion. Sixty persons
attended by invitation physicists from industrial laboratories,
physicist managers from industry, and academic physicists from
major universities. Financial support was obtained without great
difficulty from ten different sources -- companies, government
agencies, and international organizations. The discussion was
lively and is well reported in the proceedings of the Seminar
and its companion volume of papers (10). Casimir's post-Seminar
comments in the preface to the proceedings are, as usual, trenchant:
"Industry is to a large extent based on physical research. Formerly the results of physics were usually first incorporated into engineering science and then applied by engineers to industrial processes. In recent years, however, physics has come to play a much more direct role and large numbers of physicists find occupation in industry. The question whether our universities provide adequate training for a physicist who is going to work in industry is therefore an important and timely one.
Yet a word of warning is not out of place. If we speak about
the education of physicists for work in industry, we almost suggest
that industry is an invariable quantity and has quite definite
requirements. Although this may be the position taken by some
industrialists, it is in my opinion entirely wrong .Perhaps we
should some day organize a complementary meeting on 'education
of industry for employment of physicists', where we could take
the point of view that a physicist with his abilities, likes and
dislikes, is a given being and that industry should adapt itself
so as to make optimal use of this rare and valuable class of
person."
This latter suggestion may direct attention to a topic that the
Commission should revisit some time in the future. A final item
must be reported: since the Seminar was meeting on Sinterklaas
(St. Nicholas Day), its members should not have been surprised
when the Saint himself showed up at one of the plenary sessions
with a suitable fanfare of jingle bells, called Professor Casimir
up front, and demanded to know why these people were engaged in
business on his day. When Casimir explained what our purpose was,
that we all possessed a Dutch work ethic, and that most of us
had come great distances to be there, the Saint was mollified
and departed, throwing candies to the group as he went.
The year l970 -- the Commission's tenth anniversary -- was a
busy one: plans for two international meetings came to fruition.
The International Working Seminar on the Role of History of Physics
in Physics Education was held at MIT on July 13-17, l970, as the
result of the efforts of an organizing committee chaired by Allen
L. King of Dartmouth College and an editorial committee chaired
by Stephen Brush of the University of Maryland. Thirty-three
persons attended by invitation, ten of them noted historians of
science, and the rest distinguished physicists and physics teachers.
"Working" in the title signified an intent not only
to discuss the central questions of whether and how to bring the
results of the scholarly work of professional historians of science
into the physics classroom, but also to put together from the
assembled expertise lists of sources, films, historical course-content,
etc. as a help to the physics teacher. Both purposes were served
by the published reports (11), (12), but the last word was not
said on the subject; ICPE returned to it at a later conference.
A number of interesting new projects were suggested at the MIT
Seminar, some of which were realized later, some not. One of the
latter was the proposal to sponsor the writing of a history of
physics, using the best sources. Although the Commission received
this recommendation with interest and struggled with its implementation
for a year or so, the project proved to be beyond the available
resources and eventually died.
The second meeting in l970 was the International Congress on the
Education of Teachers of Physics in Secondary Schools, held in
Eger, Hungary, on September 11-17 (13). Organized by a committee
chaired by E. Nagy of Eötvös University with the assistance
of a program committee chaired by Daniele Sette, the Congress,
by its title, might have confined itself to the curricular details
of educating secondary-school teachers of physics, but in fact
was the occasion for a widely ranging discussion of the role of
science education in modern society. The high point of the Congress
for many participants was the keynote speech by P.L. Kapitza of
the Soviet Union who reviewed the signs of growing social malaise
in many of the industrialized countries and urged the Congress
to think about changing education "in order to educate people
properly in ways to use their leisure" or rather to obliterate
the distinction between work and leisure by teaching people "to
do creative work." His suggestions about how to do this in
secondary schools made a deep impression.
A fourth international meeting conceived by the Commission in
l967 was not held until almost a decade later. This was the peripatetic
conference that finally became the Conference on Teaching Physics
for Related Sciences and Professions (MIT, June 27-July 2, l976.)
Early indications of interest and support had suggested that a
meeting on this subject would be held in l972. The organizers
were forced, however, to cancel their plans because promised governmental
financial support failed to become available. The Commission then
negotiated with another host institution in another country; plans
were set in motion, but again the organizers had to withdraw their
invitation. A third time, the same thing happened. Each scheduling
and cancellation caused a great deal of work and eventually much
embarrassment for the Commission and the local organizers. The
purpose of this recital, however, is not to engage in recrimination,
but to give credit to those who, on the fourth pass, successfully
organized the Conference and saw it become a reality. Anthony
P. French of MIT, who by that time was serving as the Commission's
chairman, is chiefly responsible for giving the wandering conference
a home; E. Leonard Jossem of The Ohio State University, the present
secretary of ICPE, served as chairman of the program committee.
The attendance numbered 95 persons from 27 different countries.
Although they did not include as many representatives of engineering,
chemistry, biology, and medicine as had been hoped, a profitable
discussion took place. The Conference rounded out the Commission's
slate of important topics discussed at international meetings
and produced a useful report (14)
Publications: Cooperation with UNESCO
The period of Staub's chairmanship (l966-l972) saw the further
development of a productive relationship with UNESCO that, as
we have seen, began at the Commission's birth. Although ICPE conferences
benefited from the relationship -- there was almost always a UNESCO
subvention for the travel of participants from developing countries
- jointly sponsored publications of several kinds were the usual
modes of cooperation. Thus the UNESCO source book on the teaching
of physics in secondary schools got under way in l968 and was
published in l972; John Lewis served as editor-in-chief (15).
A university-level compendium, New Trends in Physics Teaching,
Volume II also was organized in l968 and published by UNESCO
in l972; E. Nagy was editor-in-chief. The Commission's role in
these projects was to nominate editors -- often ICPE members --
and thereafter monitor progress and offer advice. Although UNESCO
would have preferred to negotiate contracts directly with the
Commission for these services, Chairman Staub early on took a
strong position against having ICPE get involved in contract administration
and carried the Commission and eventually UNESCO along with him.
Contracts for preparing these publications were subsequently written
between UNESCO and the editors, and this in retrospect seems to
have been the wiser course of action. A related matter, on which
Staub had firm ideas, was the appropriateness of having ICPE take
part in projects that were primarily concerned with course content
in pre-university physics. He was uneasy about having the Commission
-- a group largely made up of university physicists -- issue pronouncements
about what should be taught in the secondary and primary schools.
Here he was less successful in winning his colleagues over to
his point of view, and ICPE did sponsor secondary-school projects,
like Teaching School Physics, that turned out very well.
Of course, the leadership given them by John Lewis made the difference.
It is appropriate to acknowledge the steadfast help given the Commission by UNESCO as an organization and by individual members of the UNESCO staff. At a time that has witnessed increasing criticism of UNESCO and the withdrawal of one of its largest members from its support, the world should remember that UNESCO has done and is doing many good things for the area represented by the E and the S in its name. Albert V. Baez, the director of UNESCO's Division of Science Teaching for many years, a physicist himself, was a firm supporter of ICPE
activities that were related to UNESCO's general program. His
successor, Harold Foecke, an engineer, was also supportive, not
hesitating to turn to ICPE on many occasions. Nahum Joel, whose
interest in promoting better physics teaching worldwide was stimulated
by his participation in the l960 Paris Conference as a Chilean
physicist, worked especially closely with ICPE during his long,
productive career at UNESCO and was a de facto corresponding
member of the Commission for many years. Berol Robinson and Sidney
Passman had a similar good working relationship with ICPE at the
university level. Therese Grivet and other members of the UNESCO
staff also worked effectively with ICPE on various special projects.
There were problems, to be sure: as members of a large bureaucracy,
UNESCO staff members were never completely free to exercise their
initiative as individuals, and UNESCO funds were never sufficient
to meet its global responsibilities. But UNESCO was a rather constant
star in the ICPE firmament, and the Commission never resorted
to UNESCO without getting some form of help.
IUPAP: In Loco Parentis
From time to time, the Commission dealt with IUPAP policy issues.
At its meeting of 6 December l968 in Eindhoven, ICPE discussed
a question that had been referred to it by the IUPAP Executive
Committee: How can the Union promote the integration of teaching
and major research organizations? The issue had first been raised
by the International Union of Biological Sciences, which had urged
that teaching and research in the biological sciences be integrated
to the greatest extent possible. The issue in physics, of course,
had become prominent with the growth of "big science"
at large laboratories, such as CERN, where a umber of physicists
were permanent members of the staff who did no teaching. In the
ICPE discussion, Sette suggested that CERN organize more summer
courses in which the permanent staff members could teach. Staub
commented that as a matter of principle teaching and research
should always be combined; permanent staff at large laboratories
should go back to university teaching from time to time. The Commission
finally agreed on a resolution for submission to the Thirteenth
General Assemble of IUPAP (Dubrovnik, l969), which, after making
small modifications, adopted it. (17) The operative sections were
as follows:
1. Research and education should be carried on in the closest possible association;
2. Any tendencies toward divergence between the activities
of advancing and disseminating knowledge should be vigorously
counteracted and efforts to improve the teaching of physics be
encouraged;"
These were followed by a number of sections dealing with possible
ways to promote the integration of research and teaching. The
resolution obviously had high importance for the Commission, and
its adoption by IUPAP was gratifying. The problem of integrating
research and teaching -- in the sense of the Dubrovnik resolution
as well as in other respects -- is still very much with us.
Another policy issue had to do with the application of an IUPAP
principle on the free circulation of scientists. Along with the
other members of ICSU, the Union adhered to a long-standing declaration
of principle on this matter. The relevant words (17) were as follows:
"I.U.P.A.P. will not sponsor a conference if visas are
refused for travel to it purely on grounds of nationality or citizenship.
The Commission encountered this problem on one occasion when the
host country refused to grant a visa to a participant in an ICPE
conference. Although the grounds for refusal were not stated there
were compelling reasons for believing that they had to do with
citizenship in a country that was "non grata" to the
host country. The scientific and professional qualifications of
the participant were not an issue. The Commission immediately
informed the organizing committee in the host country of the IUPAP
principal and asked that a visa be granted. Stalemate ensued.
The IUPAP Executive entered the fray, made strong representations
to the host country through its National Committee, and asked
the Commission to prepare to cancel IUPAP sponsorship of the conference.
Seven days before the scheduled opening date, the signals turned
favorable A message from the conference hosts stated that a visa
would be granted. The Commission thereupon reaffirmed its sponsorship,
and the conference began as scheduled. But the person who had
been excluded decided not to attend.
At the time of the fourteenth General Assembly (Washington, 1972)
-- IUPAP's Fiftieth Anniversary -- the nine ICPE members attending
held an informal luncheon meeting at the Cosmos Club in Washington
to discuss some issues central to the Commission's mission and
future role. The following questions were posed for discussion:
Is it desirable for IUPAP to continue to have a Commission on
Physics Education? Are there more efficient ways of planning international
meetings, and of obtaining financial support for them than those
the Commission has employed in the past? Should the Commission
continue to distribute its efforts over a wide range of educational
problems in physics, including secondary education and general
education of non-scientists, or should it restrict its scope to
physics education for future researchers and teachers of advanced
students and to manpower questions in physics? The consensus concerning
the first question was an affirmative answer, rejecting the feasibility
of discontinuing the ICPE and throwing IUPAP's support instead
to other international educational organizations, such as the
ICSU Committee on Science Education. Such an action, it was feared,
would cause the special educational concerns of physicists to
be lost in transdisciplinary programs. Likewise the answer to
the second question was a philosophical affirmative, but the group
was not able to come up with any practical new suggestions; ICPE
would continue to muddle along financially, but would seek to
be active in its orientation towards problems, not passive nor
purely consultative. Question three was answered in the affirmative
to the first part and the negative to the second: the Commission
would continue to assess educational problems and do what it thought
was best, without arbitrary restrictions. Although the group arriving
at these answers was not the one finally responsible -- IUPAP
itself, through its Executive and General Assemblies, would have
to give the final answers -- the Commission members were a knowledgeable
group, and it was good for ICPE to confront the questions of its
existence from time to time.
Since we are considering various IUPAP matters here, it is useful
to assess the Union as a parent organization. From ICPE's prenatal
days of l959 and l960, the IUPAP Executive and successive General
Assemblies had been generally interested, supportive, and benevolent
toward physics education. Commission 14 had had its problems:
unlike most of the other IUPAP Commissions, which usually dealt
with crisp scientific problems and could tap the deep well-springs
of research moneys throughout the world for support, ICPE had
to separate educational problems from a complex, confused social
substrate and to deal with them with very limited resources. ICPE
had a significant number of partial failures on its record, along
with a few undoubted successes. IUPAP, however, never wavered
in its support. One of its principal contributions, of course,
was the selection of members of the Commission and a procedure
for regular turnover. Another was a modest financial contribution.
Some examples of the latter may be helpful. IUPAP's contribution
to the direct support of the l960 Paris Conference was $l065 out
of a total of $7584. At the election of the Third Commission in
l966, ICPE was informed that it would receive a travel grant of
$375 per year for the triennium l967-l970, could request the allotment
for two years simultaneously if it wished, and could request the
previous year's unused fund of $375. That made available total
funds of $1125 for the Commission in l967, since the previous
Commission had bequeathed no non-IUPAP funds to its successor.
This IUPAP contribution improved somewhat in later years. My notes
show that for l968-l969 (the fiscal year of the Eindhoven seminar)
ICPE had available in its treasury - not including Seminar funds
- $4,452 (including $2339 from IUPAP and $2113 from all other
sources), of which it spent $2588 for travel grants to Eindhoven.
To put the IUPAP contribution into perspective, the Union's financial
report for l968 (17) shows total income of $56,546, of which $28,450
was spent for IUPAP conferences and $5,410 for the traveling expenses
of its sixteen Commissions. As an example of ICPE need, however,
the Commission estimated in l971 the cost of the Conference on
Teaching Physics for Related Sciences and Professions at $18,000,
toward which guarantees of only $6000 were available. The reader
will remember that planning for the Conference aborted three times
before it carried to term in l976. The Conference on the Education
of Teachers of Physics in Secondary Schools (l970) was estimated
in l969 to cost $14,000 (apart from the contributions of the host
country), of which IUPAP was asked to contribute $1,000.
But the largest contribution IUPAP made to ICPE -- and indeed
to all of the IUPAP Commissions -- was the prestige and comfort
of sheltering beneath the Union's wings and being part of a highly
respected, democratically run, principled international organization.
In its regular activities between General Assemblies, ICPE dealt
mostly with the IUPAP Secretary-General and Associate Secretary-General:
C.C. Butler of Imperial College in London served in the former
position for many years and Larkin Kerwin of the Universite Laval
in Quebec in the latter. In l972, J.S. Nilsson of the Institute
of Theoretical Physics in Göteborg became Associate Secretary-General
when Butler and Kerwin moved up in IUPAP's executive succession.
All three were interested in education, sympathetic toward ICPE,
and ready with good advice when called upon.
The Fifth Commission
At the l972 General Assembly, the membership of the Commission
was reconstituted as follows: William C. Kelly (U.S.) was named
chairman and John L. Lewis (U.K.) secretary; other members included
G. Delacote (France), E. Ferreira (Brazil), A.P. French (U.S.),
A. Harasima (Japan), L.S. Kothari (India), W. Kroebel (West Germany),
A.N. Matveyev (U.S.S.R.), E. Nagy (Hungary), and J. Werle (Poland).
John L. Lewis, who had already served two terms on the Commission,
brought energy, astuteness, and a wealth of educational experience
to the affairs of the Commission. A Cambridge University graduate
in physics, he was the head of the Science Department at Malvern
College and was expert in ways of making physics interesting to
pre-university students from early schooling to the sixth form.
He was a leader in the Nuffield Physics Project in the United
Kingdom, which brought about a significant reform of physics teaching
there and in many other countries as well. Hypercharged and efficient,
John exercised not only major responsibilities for his school
and country, but a variety of others at the international level,
of which the ICPE secretaryship was only one. He was active in
the affairs of the ICSU Committee on Science Education, served
as editor-in-chief of UNESCO's Source Book Project, became editor
of the Commission's Newsletter when that got under way in the
l970's, and was one of the principal organizers of the Edinburgh
Conference on Physics Education (l975).
Anthony P. French, who had now joined the Commission, deserves
his own annals in ICPE history, because he served as chairman
from l975 to l981. I cannot resist saying a few words about him,
however. His acquisition was an ICPE triumph and his beneficial
influence on the Commission was immediately felt. Born in l920
in Brighton, England, Tony had earned three degrees in physics
at Cambridge University. At the Cavendish Laboratory there, he
had made some of the first studies of angular distributions of
particles from nuclear reactions at low energies. During World
War II, he worked at Los Alamos, returning to England after the
war to take a position in teaching and research at Cambridge.
He returned to the United States in l955 to become professor
of physics and eventually department chairman at the University
of South Carolina. In l962, he moved to Massachusetts Institute
of Technology where he became professor of physics in l964 and,
later, executive officer of the physics department. Tony was a
stimulating teacher and had long been active in the improvement
of physics teaching; his textbooks were well known, and he had
played a prominent role in developing the "post-PSSC"
course of the Physical Science Study Committee. As a new ICPE
member, Tony plunged into the Commission's activities and was
soon chairing the Edinburgh Conference, representing ICPE at
the Latin-American Conference on the Role of Physics Education
in Economic Development in Venezuela in l975, and -- as indicated
above -- making the arrangements to salvage the Conference on
Teaching Physics for Related Sciences and Professions. His later
contributions to ICPE fall outside the scope of this report; they
have been numerous.
Also appointed to the Commission in l972 was E. Ferreira, professor
of physics in the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro;
he gave the Commission guidance in understanding the conditions
of physics teaching in Latin America. H.H. Staub, I am glad to
say, maintained his connection with ICPE by serving as a corresponding
member in 1972-75.
During this period, the Commission successfully staged a major
conference, explored the possibilities of holding conferences
on several other topics, and saw further development of its joint
publishing ventures with UNESCO. The major conference was the
International Conference on Physics Education (Edinburgh, July
29-August 6, l975) which had first been proposed to the Commission
by Harold Foecke of UNESCO at the ICPE meeting of June 25, l971.
The attendance was the largest ever at an ICPE conference -- 330
persons from 73 countries. In a program planned jointly by ICPE
and UNESCO, topics that had been discussed fifteen years earlier
at the Paris Conference were consciously revisited and updated;
it was a very eclectic kind of conference. Emphasis was placed
on the participation of representatives of developing countries
and, thanks to the UNESCO subvention, goodly numbers of such countries
were represented. French (1) has given a summary of the program
and an analysis of the attendance in the context of the impact
of ICPE on physics education worldwide. The report of the Conference
appeared in several journal articles (18),(19) and in one of the
UNESCO New Trends volumes (20). A final, horticultural note: the
reader will have noticed that the Commission and the Conference
had the same acronym -- ICPE -- and will be pleased to learn that
these letters were spelled out in begonias in the floral display
on the side of Castle Hill in Edinburgh during the Conference.
ICPE during these years considered several other conference subjects
that seemed interesting and important, but because of lack of
resources eventually died of malnutrition. One was computers in
physics education -- even then, in the days before mass use of
microcomputers, a hot topic in physics. The Commission discussed
a six-day conference on the subject to be held in late August,
in l975, in Paris, scheduled between the Edinburgh Conference
and the International Conference on Computer Education in Marseille
in September. It would be concerned mostly with computers in higher
education and with course software in physics. An attempt was
made to work out the scheduling with the international group (IFIP)
arranging the Marseille Conference, but not to the satisfaction
of the host institution for the ICPE conference, and the idea
was dropped. A like fate befell the proposed conference on Examinations
and Testing in Physics and one on Physics and Society.
Two other conference possibilities were discussed, but not realized
until years later by other Commissions: a physics education conference
in Japan and a conference on research in pre-university physics
education.
Among the publications that emerged as a result of the work of
the Fifth Commission were New Trends, Volume III, which
contained the papers of the Edinburgh Conference, and an ICPE
Newsletter. The latter was proposed by Harold Foecke of UNESCO
at the ICPE meeting of March 27-28, l973, as a project suitable
for UNESCO support and likely to produce benefits for worldwide
communication in physics education. The Commission warmly agreed,
and planning got under way under the leadership of John Lewis,
who subsequently served as the Newsletter's first editor. The
publication has lived up to the expectations for it and is still
in existence.
Conclusion
At the Fifteenth General Assembly (Munich, l975), the membership
of the Commission rotated again, bringing A.P. French to the post
of chairman and giving John Lewis another term as secretary. Delacote
and Matveyev continued as members, and Y. Kakiuchi (Japan), A.
Loria (Italy), G. Marx (Hungary), G. Mokhtar (Egypt), M.A. Moreira
(Brazil), and R. Ronne (Sweden) were newly elected. My formal
association with the Commission ended, but I have continued to
follow its progress with interest and an insider's sympathy.
Summing up the first fifteen years of an organization that is
about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary and is still going
strong is hardly possible, nor is it necessary. ICPE has performed
valiantly for physics education and, as a result of the labors
of its earlier and present members, will continue to do good things.
It could have accomplished more in the past if it had had greater
resources, but they were not available. Perhaps having to pinch
pennies has not been entirely bad. I remember the remark of one
of the senior statesmen of physics: "IUPAP Commissions generally
do good. They don't have enough money to do harm." Be that
as it may, some easing of the constant search for funds and some
resources to seize opportunities in a more timely way would be
beneficial. I applaud the efforts of the present ICPE leadership
toward these ends. The work has gone well in spite of difficulties,
bringing to reality that midsummer night's dream of so many years
ago.
William C. Kelly
August 15, 1985
References
1. A.P. French, A Short History of the Commission, Contemporary
Physics 21, 331, l980
2. Sanborn C. Brown and Norman Clarke, International Education
in Physics, Technology Press and John Wiley, l960
3. William P. Allis, Sanborn Conner Brown, Physics Today,
May, l982,. 98
4. IUPAP, l922-l972, Fiftieth Anniversary Volume, l972
5. S.C. Brown, N. Clarke, and J. Tiomno, Why Teach Physics?,
MIT Press, l964
6. William C. Kelly, editor, A Survey of the Teaching of Physics
at Universities, UNESCO, l966
7. Sanborn C. Brown and Norman Clarke, The Education of a
Physicist, Oliver and Boyd, l966
8. F. Bloch, Hans H. Staub , Physics Today, March, l982,
74
9. Hendrik B. G. Casimir, Haphazard Reality: Half a Century
of Science, Harper, l984
10. G. Diemer and J. H. Emck, editors, International Seminar
on the Education of Physicists for Work in Industry: Vol.
I - Proceedings, Vol. II - A Source Book of Papers,
Centrex, l969
11. Stephen G. Brush and Allen L. King, editors, History in
the Teaching of Physics, University Press of New England,
l972
12. Stephen G. Brush, editor, Resources for the History of
Physics, University Press of New England, l972
13. S.C. Brown, F. J. Khedives, and E. J. Wenham, editors, Teaching
Physics - An Insoluble Task?, MIT Press, l971
14. A.P. French and E.L. Jossem, Teaching Physics for Related
Sciences and Professions, American Journal of Physics,
44, 1149, 1976
15. John L. Lewis, editor, Teaching School Physics, Penguin-UNESCO,
1970
16. Elemer Nagy, editor, New Trends in Physics Teaching,
Vol. II, UNESCO, l970
17. IUPAP, General Report, l970
18. W.F. Archbald et al., Physics Education, 10,
469, 1976. Ibid 11, 8, l975
19. Lester Paldy, The Physics Teacher, 13, 480, l975
20. J. Lewis, G. Delacote, and J. Jardine, editors, New Trends in Physics Teaching,
Vol. III, UNESCO, l976
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