John McConnell, Founder and Board member emeritus, of Eureka! McConnell Science Museum, spent his science career as a physicist, working at the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University and Los Alamos National Laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The years spent at Iowa State were in a nuclear physics group looking at gaseous fission products at the reactor site. The last 18 years at Los Alamos were spent as the physicist in charge of the injectors for a half-mile long linear accelerator known as the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF). Upon retirement from Los Alamos in 1990, John and his wife moved to Grand Junction, where he began volunteering in schools, helping kids with science, and eventually founded the Western Colorado Math & Science Center (later renamed Eureka!).
The years spent as an experimental physicist have provided John with the experience required to develop meaningful hands-on displays incorporating the fundamental laws of science. He is well known for his mentoring skills, having mentored Ryan Patterson, winner of all of the major science awards in 2001-2002 and Derick Vigil, a PhD physics graduate of the University of California (Berkeley), among others. John has received numerous awards for his work with kids and science education. Among those awards are the following:
- Corporation for Public Service Award (one of only seven in the nation)
- Governor’s Colorado Cares Volunteer Service Award for education, 2001
- United States Department of Education John Stanford Education Heroes Award (one of ten in the nation)
- Points of Light Award, 2000
- Doctor of Science, honoris causa from the University of Colorado in May 2004 in recognition of his exceptional commitment to K-12 math and science education in Colorado
- Olympic Torchbearer of the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Torch Relay, for his “inspiration to others”
- Recognition in “Passionaries”, 2006, a book by Barbara R. Metzler describing 35 Americans who turned “compassion into action, founding and operating world impacting non-profits”.
