Courtesy : School of Science Smart Boy

The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. Each November, about 30,000 eighth and ninth graders take the three-hour test for admittance to eight of the nine specialized high schools. The test is extremely competitive, with only 800 of the 30,000 applicants being accepted to Bronx Science each year. # ISO certification in India

Founded in 1938 in the Bronx, New York City, Bronx Science is now situated in an educational area known as the Educational Mile in Bedford Park, a neighborhood in the northwest portion of the Bronx. Although originally known for its focus on mathematics and science, Bronx Science also emphasizes the humanities and social sciences and continually attracts students with a wide variety of interests beyond math and science. # ISO certification in India

With eight Nobel Prize-winning alumni, seven in physics and one in chemistry, it has produced the most Nobel laureates in science of any secondary school in the world. Bronx Science alumni have also won two Turing Awards, sometimes unofficially referred to as the Nobel Prize in computer science; six National Medals of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor; and eight Pulitzer Prizes.

Name

The Bronx High School of Science is often called Bronx Science, Bronx Sci, BX Sci, and sometimes just Science. It was formerly called Science High and its founder, Morris Meister, is said to have frequently called the school “The High School of Science.” # ISO certification in India

History

Founding

The old Bronx Science logo

Bronx Science was founded in 1938 as a specialized science and math high school for boys, by resolution of the Board of Education of the City of New York, with Morris Meister as the first principal of the school. They were given use of an antiquated Gothic-gargoyled edifice located at Creston Avenue and 184th Street, in the Fordham Road-Grand Concourse area of the Bronx. The building, built in 1918 for Evander Childs High School, had been successively occupied by Walton High School (1930) and by an annex of DeWitt Clinton High School (1935). The initial faculty were composed in part by a contingent from Stuyvesant High School.

Principal Meister put his imprint on the school from its formation, for example selecting as school colors “green to represent chlorophyll and gold the sun, both of which are essential to the chain of life.” # ISO certification in India

Expansion to co-education

The former Gothic building at Creston Avenue and 184th Street that housed the school from its founding in 1938 until 1959

Bronx Science started with about 150 ninth year students and 250 tenth year students, the remaining facilities of the building being used by DeWitt Clinton. As more boys began to attend Science, the Clinton contingent was gradually returned to its own main building. During their joint occupation, which lasted for 2 years until 1940, the two schools had separate teaching staff and classes, but the same supervision and administration. # ISO certification in India

In 1946, as a result of the efforts of Meister, the faculty, and the Parents Association, the school became co-ed, giving girls of New York equal opportunity to pursue a quality education in a specialized high school, previously denied to them. This expansion to co-education preceded its rivals Stuyvesant (1969) and Brooklyn Tech (1972) by more than two decades. # ISO certification in India

In 1958, after 20 years as principal of the school, Morris Meister resigned to become the first president of the newly organized Bronx Community College. Mr. Meister personally selected a teacher, Alexander Taffel, to succeed him as principal. # ISO certification in India

Move to modern facilities

Dedication of the new building in 195

From the beginning, the Parents Association and Principal Morris Meister campaigned for a new building. The number of students exceeded the capacity of the building on 184th Street, so the top floor of Public School 85 on Marion Avenue and 187th Street was used as the “Annex.” After twenty years, but under Principal Taffel, plans were finally completed for a new $8 million building, designed by the architectural firm of Emery Roth and Sons. The new building was on 205th Street near Bedford Park Boulevard, in a predominantly institutional area, between DeWitt Clinton High School and its large football field on one side, and Harris Field and Hunter College (now Lehman College) on the other. On March 3, 1959, students and faculty occupied the new building for the first time, solving the problem of how to move the books from the old library to the new in typical Bronx Science manner: on Friday afternoon each student took home five library books from the old building, and on Monday returned them to the new one. # ISO certification in India

They entered a school equipped with more modern classrooms, laboratories, and technical studio areas. The main lobby entrance featured a 63-foot (19 m), Venetian glass mosaic mural overhead, depicting major figures from the history of science such as Marie Curie and Charles Darwin under the protective hands of a God-like figure representing knowledge, with this quote from John Dewey: “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.” The mural is an original work by Frank J. Reilly entitled Humanities Protecting Biology, Physics, Chemistry. Legions of students over the years, bemoaning the lack of swimming facilities, have sarcastically referred to the mural as “the Science swimming pool”, perpetuating the idea – perhaps apocryphal – that a choice was made to fund a mural rather than a pool in the new building. # ISO certification in India

The move was not without incident. In the first spring of the move, rumors swept the school that various Bronx youth street gangs were coming to the school, and that the Fordham Baldies would shave the hair of Science students. This never happened. Another incident did happen that spring: The first time Science girls appeared on the outdoor physical education field in gym clothes, some students from the neighboring, all-male DeWitt Clinton High School charged the separation fence between their field and the Science field. The fence held, but the female students exercised indoors for the remainder of that year. # ISO certification in India

When Bronx Science celebrated its silver anniversary in June 1963, President John F. Kennedy hailed it as “a significant and pathfinding example of a special program devoted to the development of the student gifted in science and mathematics.” The President had recently selected one of its graduates, Harold Brown, of the class of 1943, for the position of Director of Defense Research and Engineering; he would later serve as Secretary of Defense under President Jimmy Carter. # ISO certification in India