Chapter 3: Paul Dehart Hurd (1905-2001): Science Educator with a Social Vision

Upon his death at age 95, Paul DeHart Hurd had been science education’s eminent elder statesman and eloquent spokesperson for decades. In his generation, reaching retirement at 65 was an accomplishment. One would have expected him to retire, not just from his university position (which he did), but also from work in science education (which he did not). Our enterprise had the gift of his contributions for seventy-two years, thirty years past retirement age. His final manuscript was submitted to BSCS: Innovative Science Education (initially Biological Science Curriculum Study) organization one week before he died from pneumonia (Spector, 2007).

I think of this intellectually gifted indomitable man who influenced science education world-wide as the “grandfather of science education” in the United States. “What he wanted, perhaps above all, was the creation of new ways of thinking for a new age” (Eisner, 2004). Inventing Science Education for the New Millennium (Hurd, 1997) synthesized what Dr. Hurd believed about science education in ninety pages filled with crisp quotable quotes (Roeder, 1998).