Driven by his parent’s expectations for higher education, and his love of airplanes Dr. Jeffery Kirsch began his career in the physical sciences receiving a Bachelor degree in Science and Engineering (B.S.E) from Princeton University in 1962. From there, he obtained a M.S.A.E from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1963 and continued on to achieve a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering in 1969. After his graduate work he ended up in San Diego where he was hired at Systems, Science and Software working with nuclear bombs, not designing the bombs, but testing them. Although the work was interesting, it was not for him. “I didn’t have a philosophical epiphany or anything. I just felt uncomfortable doing it…I had interesting things to work on, but some of them were frightful,” Kirsch said. “I was working on nuclear tests, and my thing was aerodynamics and dust clouds and things like that. After I had a few nightmares, I figured, ‘This is telling me something,’ so I began looking at other options.”

Fortunately for the San Diego community Dr. Kirsch moved to KPBS as Executive Producer and Director of the KPBS-TV Science Center in San Diego. Over a nine-year period, Dr. Kirsch was responsible for science-oriented program production and brought KPBS to the national stage with their documentaries. But then he heard the call of “the dome”, the IMAX theater at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. Interested in the communication of science to the public, he became the Executive Director of the Fleet in 1983, and until his retirement in 2013 he oversaw the expansion of the museum into one of the preeminent teaching museums is the country. In his tenure, Fleet membership quintupled, and the physical space doubled. The changes made the Fleet center one of the top science education centers in the country. Second only to the USS Midway, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center is one most visited museums in San Diego. Dr. Kirsch is the executive producer of six IMAX productions and the consulting producer on six additional IMAX productions. Not resting on his laurels, he continues to explore how the IMAX and the domed IMAX can be used in the digital age, bringing new thrilling experiences and scientific exploration to more audiences.

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