I am writing today because I and my brothers, Jeremy and Arthur, wanted to provide you and other physics teachers a little flavor of physics via my father’s lifetime of experiences. Charles I. Hellman, who helped open the Bronx High School of Science (BHSS) physics department in 1939, taught two future Nobel Prize physics winners, and was the longest continuously licensed amateur radio operator in the United States, died January 25, 2017, at the age of 106. Mr. Hellman did his teacher training at Stuyvesant High School during 1933-34, received his MS in 1935, became the permanent substitute teacher at Haaren H.S. from 1934-36, and then, through a grueling exam process, obtained a physics position at Stuyvesant.
Stuyvesant was influential in the development of the science and mathematics magnet school. By the 1930s it had evolved to the point where passing an entrance exam was necessary for admission. Stuyvesant’s curriculum...