About PacSci

Born in the spirit of innovation at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, the Pacific Science Center has ignited curiosity for more than 60 years. Since its founding as the nation’s first science and technology center, PacSci has worked to expand access to science, serve as a vital resource for educators, and fuel discovery and experimentation as a vibrant community laboratory.

PacSci is an independent, not-for-profit institution that serves more than 500,000 people in the Pacific Northwest and beyond each year. Look for its iconic arches at the foot of the Space Needle in the Seattle Center—and for innovative PacSci programming and digital resources at schools, libraries, community centers throughout Washington and beyond.

Our Mission

PacSci ignites curiosity in every child and fuels a passion for discovery, experimentation, and critical thinking in all of us.

400K

guests visited PacSci in the past year

95K+

students got curious with PacSci’s Science on Wheels, field trips, and Digital Discovery Workshops

339

camp scholarships to Camps for Curious Minds attendees

See Our Impact

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Delight our guests

We offer warm hospitality and highly-engaging interactive experiences. People of all ages and levels of science sophistication find their time with us entertaining, enriching, and memorable. Our guests recommend us and seek to visit often.

Support educators and education

We support high-impact science education, focusing on pre K-12.

Model science as a process

We show that science is a boundless and timeless process of inquiry, discovery, and problem solving. We inspire people to ask questions, develop hypotheses, conduct experiments, and evaluate evidence in all aspects of their lives.

Serve as a community laboratory and living room

The community gathers at Pacific Science Center to discuss, debate, and collaborate on opportunities and challenges in which science and technology play roles. People come here to learn about and celebrate scientific and technological achievement. We pay special attention to the issues relevant to our city and region.

Embrace experimentation and innovation

Experiments and innovation are central to the experiences we provide and the work we do. We also demonstrate that failure is a key ingredient of progress.

Run a smart and responsible business

We invest to sustain and grow our long-term impact. Our work attracts investment from public and private sources. We are leaders in socially and ecologically responsible behavior.

Enable access for all

Our facilities, programs, experiences, and the benefits they provide are accessible to people of all backgrounds and financial, social, physical, and intellectual abilities.

Expect and nurture excellence in our people

We attract, develop, and retain exceptionally talented people who believe deeply in our mission and who reflect the community we aim to serve. We expect excellence, and we inspect what we expect. Our culture is collaborative, creative, joyful, and fun.

…Minoru Yamasaki’s design combines a spareness and precision suggestive of science with a soaring lightness that can be called symbolic of spiritual aspiration. John Canaday, art critic for the New York Times

It should enrich the life of the community. It should amuse, beguile, stimulate, inspire and inform. It should complement and supplement the interests and scientific resources of this area. […]The Pacific Science Center should pioneer in a great experiment designed to show that the essence, aims and methods of science can be widely appreciated in the general population. Dixy Lee Ray, PacSci’s first Education Coordinator and Director (1963-1972)

The fountain court, with its floating terraces and iconic arches, sends my imagination soaring today just as much as it did decades ago on elementary-school field trips. It’s civic architecture at its best — emotional, inspiring and poetic. Amy Janof, Janof Architecture

MORE TO EXPLORE

Learn more about Pacific Science Center’s history and architecture.

Hear from Les Blackwell on his experience a the 1962 World’s Fair.

See all blogs