National Science Board Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Members

Dr. Leon M. Lederman

Commission Co-Chairman

Resident Scholar,
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

Leon M. Lederman has been Resident Scholar at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy since 1998 and Pritzker Professor of Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago since 1993. An internationally renowned specialist in high-energy physics, he is director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois (1979-1989). In addition, Dr. Lederman has been associated with Columbia University as a student and faculty member for more than thirty years and was the Eugene Higgins Professor at Columbia. From 1961 to 1979, he was director of Nevis Laboratories, the Columbia physics department center for experimental research in high-energy physics. With colleagues and students from Nevis, Dr. Lederman led an intensive and wide-ranging series of experiments, which provided major advances in particle physics. His publication list runs to well over 300 papers.

Dr. Lederman has served as president and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific organization in the United States. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science (1965), the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1976), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), the Nobel Prize in Physics (1988), and the Enrico Fermi Prize given by President Clinton in 1993. He served as a founding member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel of the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Committee for Future Accelerators, as well as a Commissioner for the White House Fellows.

Dr. Lederman currently serves on over a dozen boards, including the Board of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the Council of American Science Writers, and the University Research Association Board. He has received honorary degrees and memberships in over 60 institutions, including those in England, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, Israel, Finland, Russia, India, and China.

Dr. Lederman has worked tirelessly to improve science education. He was instrumental in founding the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), a residential high school for the gifted, and the Teachers Academy for Math and Science (TAMS), which provides professional development for primary school teachers in Chicago. The "hands-on" pedagogue has been applied in France, Brazil, China, and Malaysia, mainly through the agency of the Committee on Capacity Building in Science. Dr. Lederman chaired this Committee of the International Council for Science (ICSU) from 1994 to 2000. He was on the Task Force on K-12 Mathematics and Science Education of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government that issued the report "In the National Interest: The Federal Government in the Reform of K-12 Math and Science Education" in September of 1991. The Lederman Science Center, a hands-on science museum where visitors can explore the physics and technology of Fermilab, was also born as a result of his efforts. "Saturday Morning Physics" (a short-course for high school students) was initiated by Dr. Lederman in 1980. He has been an outspoken advocate for new approaches to secondary science that emphasize a coherent three-year science curriculum beginning with physics. A growing number of schools are introducing the new curricula.