Robert F. Tinker

In 1994, Robert Tinker started the Concord Consortium [1] in Concord, Massachusetts, so he could concentrate on applications of technology to improve the quality of education, such as web-based courses. His early work at Concord pioneered applications of portable computers to education and the use of the Web for inquiry-based professional development and teaching. One of these early projects created the first Virtual High School, which was spun out as an independent nonprofit that continues to be a trendsetter in online teaching.

Committed to improving physics education for all, he spent three years (1975–78) concurrently as a lecturer delivering Chautauqua Courses for college teachers held at regional field centers, a program developed by the AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1971 funded by the National Science Foundation. The original idea behind Chautauqua was to present a series of short courses for instructors who teach at two- and four-year institutions in order to give them some new information about topics they found of interest and would teach others.

In 1971, he accepted a position as an assistant professor at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts the same year his second son, Aaron BredinTinker, was born. While concurrently teaching physics, Robert took a freelance position as curriculum writer and consultant for the Technical Education Research Centers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a physicist who was also skilled at writing, he authored several grants that funded the Modular Electronics Project and the Computer and Laboratory Math Project in 1976 and became the Director of the Technology Center for TERC at its location on 8 Eliot St., Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his tenure, the organization grew from six staff to 100 full-time and successfully initiated a series of projects that marked TERC's transition from postsecondary technical education to K-12 science.

In 1966, Robert and Barbara returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he did his doctoral work in experimental low-temperature physics at MIT and participated in Barbara's tutoring and community organizing efforts. His thesis work was under the direction of professor and physicist John G. King. While he did research at MIT, he accepted a part-time instructor job at Wellesley College, to cover the high cost of tuition and the arrival of his first son, Dylan C. Tinker in 1968. He earned his Ph.D. in 1970, writing a dissertation on superfluids and evaporation properties of Helium II films.

Tinker founded a small enterprise called the Recruitment of Southern Teachers, Inc. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, after receiving a grant from the Ford Foundation from 1964 to 1966 that enticed qualified teachers to spend time in Black colleges. After a summer as research assistant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1965, while Barbara worked in a local pueblo CAP program, he returned to Stillman for an additional year, and Barbara completed her master's degree at Columbia and taught History of Religions at Stillman.

At Swarthmore, Robert double majored in Physics and Chemistry and graduated with High Honors in 1963. There he met Barbara Ann Perkins, who was participating in student civil rights actions. They were married in the Swarthmore Friends Meeting in February 1964. Robert finished his graduate studies early from Stanford University with a master's degree and, with Barbara, headed South to teach at Stillman College, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama from 1964 to 1966. There they marched on a variety of occasions, including in Selma, and worked in voter registration efforts locally.

Robert Frederick Tinker (December 11, 1941 – June 21, 2017) was an American physicist, science educator, and education technology innovator, who pioneered constructivist approaches to education, particularly novel uses of educational technology in science. He is known for leading the initiation of probeware for education. He was also the creator, with Monica Bradsher of the National Geographic Society, of the first global kids online science network, the National Geographic Kids Network,. He created one of the first virtual high schools, working with Dr. Shelley Berman, then Principal of Hudson Schools in Massachusetts. He served as a co-founder and president of the Concord Consortium from 1994 to 2009.

Robert Tinker, the youngest of a family of four children, was born on December 11, 1941, in Wilmington, Delaware to Janet Casto Tinker of Terre Haute, Indiana and John Marlin Tinker. His father, a chemist, directed the Jackson Laboratory at DuPont, and played a leading part in the production of sulphanilamide family of drugs and anthrimides to make inks, which had stopped being shipped from Germany during World War II.