Robert Kilburn; professor had hands-on approach to science

ROBERT KILBURN

For his daughter's ninth birthday party, Robert Kilburn took her and 11 of her girlfriends on a nature walk and taught them how to make terrariums out of fishbowls.

"My friends still say that was the best birthday party ever," said Mr. Kilburn's daughter, Kristina Naylor, 44, of Dummerston, Vt. "It opened my eyes to the possibility that learning could be really fun. Even then, I thought, 'That was more fun than a sleepover party, wasn't it?' "

Mr. Kilburn, a member of the Massachusetts Hall of Fame for science educators and a professor at Boston University who coauthored a series of science textbooks, died June 22 from complications of a stroke at Briarwood Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Needham. He was 77.

A celebration of his life will be held Saturday at the First Parish in Needham Unitarian Universalist.

Born in Lawrence Park, Pa., Mr. Kilburn graduated from Lawrence Park High School in 1949 and majored in chemistry at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1953 with a bachelor of science degree. He received his master of science degree in biophysics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1955 and his doctorate in science education from Syracuse University in New York in 1971.

While at Syracuse, he began coauthoring "Exploring Science," a series of K-12 science textbooks that became part of the curriculum in several states and Canadian provinces. He continued with new editions until 1986.

In summer 1952, while working as a bus tour guide for American Field Service, he met the woman who would become his wife, Irmeli, a foreign exchange high school student from Finland. She stayed in the United States for a year before returning home, where the couple continued to write to each other until she came back for college in 1955, the year they wed.

Also in 1955, Mr. Kilburn moved to Schenectady, N.Y., and worked at a General Electric research laboratory for two years as a biophysics researcher. In 1957, he became a science teacher in upstate New York at schools in Liverpool, Fayetteville, and Burnt Hills until 1966.

Mr. Kilburn moved to Newton in 1967 to become a science curriculum administrator for Newton public schools. He worked there until 1988.

He spent summer 1971 at Nairobi University, teaching Kenyan science instructors the kind of hands-on science experiments that could be done in villages and towns without expensive equipment.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he served on the board of directors of the American Heart Association. As an administrator in Newton, he worked to get all junior high school students tested for high cholesterol and then followed up with heart health education in schools and with individual students. He also instituted a mountain hiking program in which every eighth-grade class spent a week in New Hampshire's White Mountains to learn about nature.

In 1988, he began a 10-year stretch as a professor of science education at Boston University's School of Education that overlapped with his work in Newton.

At BU, he worked with a group of Portuguese science educators, first in Boston in 1983 and then for a fall semester in Portugal in 1984, where he and other faculty members continued advising the students with their dissertations and traveling to their hometowns.

Beginning in 1986, he consulted for WGBH-TV's science "NOVA" program for 13 years as part of a committee that facilitated adapting the programs for the classroom.

Mr. Kilburn loved hiking in the White Mountains, and he was a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club Hut Committee from the early 1980s until he suffered a stroke in 1999. The committee grappled with all aspects of maintaining the hut system, a group of mountain residences where hikers can stay overnight and have a hot meal.

In 2000, Mr. Kilburn was elected to the Massachusetts Hall of Fame for science educators.

His daughter followed in his footsteps as a science teacher at Watertown Middle School and Greenfield Middle School. She said her father gave her a great appreciation of science, often bringing it into the family's daily activities, perhaps gathering friends at a dinner party to come outside and watch the stars with his telescope.

"He was a pioneer in hands-on science," Naylor said. "He believed in getting out and doing it, not just reading about it."

In addition to his daughter and his wife, Mr. Kilburn leaves three sons, Eric of Acton; Daniel of Cambridge; and Will of Chestnut Hill; and six grandchildren.