Professor Harry Messel International Science School

The Professor Harry Messel International Science School (ISS) is based at the University of Sydney in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It has been running since 1958 when the first four Science Schools were held for high school teachers. In 1962 Harry Messel changed the focus to honour excellence in senior high school science students and to encourage them to consider careers in science.

History

Since one student from New Zealand attended the very first Science School, overseas students have been a feature of the ISS. In 1967, ten students from the USA joined the School; the following year they were joined by five from the United Kingdom and five from Japan. South-East Asia joined the ISS in 1985, when students attended from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. China has sent five students to every ISS since 1999, except for 2003 when the SARS epidemic restricted travel in the region.

The lecturers

One of the features of the International Schools is the lecture series. Past ISS lecturers include James Watson, who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, and Jerome Friedman, also a Nobel laureate his for work on particle physics, Sir Hermann Bondi (physicist and astronomer at Cambridge University), Margaret Burbidge (astronomer with the Hubble Space Telescope), Carl Sagan (writer and science communicator), and Robert May (President of the Royal Society).

Also featured were the demonstrations of Julius Sumner Miller. Later, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, the Foundation's Julius Sumner Miller Fellow, entertained and enthused the ISS Scholars with his "Great Moments in Science".

External links

* [http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/foundation/Outreach/ISS/intro.htm Professor Harry Messel International Science School]