Dr. MEISTER. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. Any other questions, sir?
Senator ALLOTT. No.

ARTICLE FROM READER'S DIGEST

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, I have here an article that appeared in the Reader's Digest, April 1956. It is condensed from the National Parent-Teacher. The article is captioned "Dr. Meister's 'Beautiful School.'" The subhead is "An Unusual High School for Unusual Students, Run by an Unusual Man."

Senator Allott, if there is no objection, we will put this article in the record following Dr. Meister's testimony.

Senator ALLOTT. There is no objection on my part.

Again I want to say, Doctor, on my own behalf, that I am most happy that we have had the benefit of having you here, giving us your views on these questions which are so vitally concerning us at

this time.

The CHAIRMAN. We certainly express our appreciation to you, Doctor. We are most grateful to you. We thank you, sir, for your very helpful testimony. It has been a great pleasure. (The article referred to follows:)

[The Reader's Digest, April 1956]

DR. MEISTER'S "BEAUTIFUL SCHOOL"

AN UNUSUAL HIGH SCHOOL FOR UNUSUAL STUDENTS-RUN BY AN UNUSUAL MAN

Condensed from National Parent-Teacher-William S. Dutton

A newspaper once spoke slightingly of the aging brick building, a relic of horseless carriage days, that houses the High School of Science in New York's Bronx. Next day this letter was in the editor's mail:

"No, we haven't a gorgeous gym, Mr. Editor, or magnificent grounds. But we have the best principal in the country, the best-liked faculty in the city and a spirit that no school can beat. If we had to choose between Science with its broken-down walls and the school with the finest building, our answer without hesitation would be: Science, here we come."

That was 10 years ago. Time has eased none of the old structure's faults, Yet last year when Principal Morris Meister announced that the school would enroll 800 new pupils, 4 times that many boys and girls applied for admittance. Some came from as far away as an hour's subway ride. They faced one of the toughest entrance exams imposed by any secondary school. They knew that if accepted they would have to do more schoolwork than the average high school demands, and hold their own in a student body of 2,400 which has a median intelligence quotient of 137-probably the highest of any high school in the United States.

Throughout the country only 1 boy or girl in 5 has an I. Q. of 116 or higher, and fewer than one-half of 1 percent exceed 150. The usual curriculum is geared to the learning pace of I. Q. 104, which is the average for secondary schools. The superior student has become today's forgotten youngster.

But Dr. Meister has not forgotten him. He has given 40 years to studying above-average youngsters.

"When the average is the norm," he says, "a kid of I. Q. 200 (we've had them up to I. Q. 208 at Science) can be just as much a misfit as a moron, and feel far more unwanted. The too-easy lessons sap incentive. Idleness breeds boredom, or worse: contempt for school, teachers, and all authority." By neglect of the gifted, he warns, the Nation is squandering a priceless potential in future leaders.

Meister joined others in persuading New York City to found the High School of Science in 1938. The plan was to limit admittance to students who had shown a bent for science and capabilities for leadership. They were to be volunteers who had recommendations from their former teachers; from the lot the most promising would be selected. With high aptitude the rule, high accomplishment would become the norm.

The teachers in this school would be guides and counselors, and no ceiling would be placed over any youngster's ambitions. Emphasis would be on the unknowns yet to be explored, on the world's needs rather than its dead past. The experiment has been successful. Last year the school's students won some $580,000 in college scholarships, topping all United States high schools. Ninety-six percent of its graduates have completed college, as compared to 14 percent for the average high school. Furthermore, the school has exploded one fallacy after another.

Fallacy: High-I. Q. kids require special teachers. Fact: At Science, teachers are assigned as at any other New York City school-from the common pool. But they can give their maximum; they, like the boys and girls, are not held back by slow-learning pupils.

Fallacy The gifted child must be pampered. Fact: Three high schools in turn abandoned the old building in which Science has held forth for 18 years. Fallacy High-I. Q. kids are puny, bespectacled bookworms. Fact: Science kids are taller and huskier than the average for their ages. Despite being a year or two younger than their rivals, they compete on even terms with the athletic teams of much bigger high schools; in swimming and tennis they rank among the city's top five; in handball they've been city champs.

I asked a dozen youngsters what they see in Science that they don't see in other schools.

"The students come first," said one boy. "We're consulted; the teachers credit us with having sense.”

"Nobody is a stuffed shirt," said another. "Any kid can get a hearing any time."

A 16-year-old girl added, “Maybe outsiders call this place an old dump, but to us-why, it's beautiful."

To Morris Meister, this latter tribute is gratifying, for it attests the success of an experiment which had its inspiration in his own schooldays in Goenitz, Poland. When Morris was small, his grandfather ran a school that was renowned for high scholarship and rigid discipline (often enforced by a strap or switch). His grandfather died and his uncle took over as schoolmaster. It was spring and the uncle opened the windows-to let the world in, he said. The kids packed books, slates and lunches, and classes were adjourned to the wooded shore of a nearby pond.

"About you is your greatest book," said his uncle.

"All nature was coming to life," Meister recalls, "and I came to life as a student. During the next 2 years I learned that school can be beautiful, and that life itself is the master textbook.

Then his father, a hatmaker, moved to New York. They lived on the lower East Side. Up through the shabby public schools there, through City College, Columbia University, degrees, honors and several years of college teaching, Meister dreamed of establishing a school like his uncle's that would excel in scholarship and also be a happy school. Science would dominate it, for Meister sees the sciences as tested roadways to truth in all realms of life. His aim was to send forth graduates aware that above-average ability entails above-average responsibility to find truth and put it to work.

In accordance with Dr. Meister's principle that the pupils themselves should exercise leadership, the student council of 65 elected members is autonomous. It administers scores of nonclass activities, from the Astronomy Club to the students' nonprofit retail store, and it deals with many matters of discipline.

Most of the pupils at Science come from modest homes, and they are of many creeds and races. The one overall requirement is that every student must have a serious purpose and the aptitude and will to attain it.

Each pupil must complete a special project. The noted scientist Dr. Irving Langmuir once visited the school and was amazed by a model that a 16-year-old boy had built of the Langmuir-Lewis atom, based on a theory that was extremely complicated.

Another special project resulted in its author's election as a Fellow of the Royal Microscopic Society of London. New York's Botanical Gardens named a bread mold "HSS" in honor of its discovery in a High School of Science class.

One evening not long ago Mariana Mandl, a pretty 16-year-old pupil, heard her father, a physician, say that outergarments made of nylon, even stockings, are prohibited in a hospital operating room. "Nylon produces static," he explained, "which may cause an explosion of the anesthetic gases."

Mariana wrote to the Dupont Co. and others for facts, and learned that the Army is keenly concerned about static. Before long she had a project underway: to lick static in nylon, something that chemists had been trying to do since nylon was invented.

When I talked with her the project was 6 months old. Not satisfied with the school's electroscope, by which static is detected, she had built her own. By her tests it is 75 percent more efficient than the school's instrument. She said she had succeeded in keeping nylon fabrics static-free 3 to 5 times longer than the usual commercial processes do. Her findings are now being evaluated by established laboratories.

In the life of a school, 18 years is a brief period in which to prove its worth, but Principal Meister and his faculty can now count real returns. Of 1,500 Regents college scholarships offered to New York City by the State of New York last year, Science graduates won 265, far more than any other high school. Among the thousands of contenders in the nationwide annual science talent search they have won 18 major scholarships and 90 honorable mentions. A survey of 1,400 graduates who have been away from Science 8 years or more shows that 70 percent have taken postgraduate work in the scientific professions; two-thirds hold honorary awards for scholarship; 25 percent have published articles or books. Yet half of the careers have been interrupted by military service.

Recently New York City decided that its High School of Science had grown up, and plans are now being made to erect a new building on another site for an estimated $7 million. There is to be no change, Meister says, in the character of the student body. And the present aim will live on: "To make each class a laboratory for finding out facts, for testing ideas and for learning by doing." The CHAIRMAN. The committee will meet in the morning at 10 o'clock to hear the testimony of Dr. Edward Teller, physicist at the radiation laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Calif. Dr. Teller, we know, is generally acclaimed as the father of the hydrogen bomb.

The committee will stand in recess until 10 o'clock in the morning. (Whereupon, at 12:05 p. m., the hearing was recessed, to reconvene at 10 a. m., Thursday, January 30, 1958.)

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1958

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to recess, in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the Capitol, Senator Lister Hill (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Hill (presiding), Murray, Morse, Smith and Allott.

Committee staff members present: Stewart E. McClure, chief clerk; Roy E. James, assistant chief clerk; John S. Forsythe, general counsel; William G. Reidy and Michael J. Bernstein, professional staff members.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will kindly come to order. We have with us as our witness this morning Dr. Edward Teller.

As we know, Dr. Teller is a physicist at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Teller, of course, needs no introduction to this committee. He is renowned throughout the world for his attainments in science and above all for the role he played in the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Dr. Teller was born in Budapest in 1908 and obtained his higher education in Germany; first at the Institute of Technology at Karlsruhe during the years 1926-28, and then at the University of Leipzig where in 1930, he obtained his Ph. D. degree. He was a research associate at Gottingen, Germany, from 1931 to 1933, a Rockefeller fellow in Copenhagen in 1934, and a lecturer at the University of London during 1935.

Dr. Teller came to this country in the mid-thirties, and from 1935 to 1941 served as professor of physics at George Washington University here in the District of Columbia.

From 1941 on, Dr. Teller was engaged in the planning and production of the function of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan project at Columbia University, at the Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and at Los Alamos, N. Mex. He taught physics at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1949, and again from 1951 and 1952. During the interval, he served at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Since 1952, he has been at the University of California radiation laboratory where he is professor of physics. Doctor, we appreciate your being here this morning. We welcome you and we will be delighted to have you now proceed in your own

way.

STATEMENT OF DR. EDWARD TELLER, PHYSICIST AT THE RADIATION LABORATORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Dr. TELLER. Thank you very much, Senator.

I should like to start with a disclaimer. I am to testify before you about education. I am no expert on education. I have been and I am very deeply interested in science and I have been and I am involved in applications of science for the security of our Nation.

I could not help but feel that general education in this country is not adequate and in the long run it will not be sufficient to satisfy the needs of the general welfare of the public and particularly our military needs.

I have from time to time looked into the question of what could be done about education and have had many discussions with friends about the matter.

In recent months, due to the fact that our scientific needs have become more and more apparent, I have gone into this question a little bit more deeply, but apart from that I have no special qualification to talk about education. Even so, I shall avail myself of this opportunity to talk about things which I have not fully mastered.

SCIENCE AND THE MILITARY SITUATION

Now, first of all, I should like to talk for just a very few minutes about science and our military situation which, of course, is at present in everybody's mind. I do not think that it is necessary to talk about it a great deal. Everybody knows about atomic energy and everybody knows about satellites and everybody knows about the remarkable way in which we can detect by radar objects which are a great distance off and which are otherwise not visible. All of these things are the products of scientific developments of a most amazing kind. They would have been impossible without great progress in science and there is no doubt that similar developments and more important developments will follow.

I cannot predict these developments. Of all unpredictable things probably future science is most unpredictable because science depends on human ingenuity of a high order, and if human ingenuity could be predicted then it would not be ingenuity.

SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS

But that there will be more developments as amazing and as important or more amazing and important than those past, I have no doubt. Without a good scientific basis we shall fall behind. I should like to say, however, that these developments are not only the result of scientific work, they react back upon science in a most important and a most fruitful manner.

We are indebted to atomic energy for a great number of important things, among which I should like to mention the exploration of the human body with the help of radioactive isotopes.

More broadly and perhaps less scientifically speaking, the fact is that industrial needs will be supplied in the coming decades to an increasing extent from atomic energy.