Since 1973 the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center has drawn families and students to this corner of Balboa Park with hands-on science. The museum is named for Reuben Hollis Fleet, the San Diego aviator and businessman who founded Consolidated Aircraft Corporation here in 1935 — a company that would later become Convair and eventually General Dynamics, building the B-24 Liberator bombers and PBY Catalina flying boats that were central to the American war effort in World War II. Fleet's military aviation legacy is an apt namesake for a science center in a city whose economy has long been shaped by aerospace and defense.
The museum was one of the first science centers in the United States to embrace fully interactive exhibits — hands-on learning rather than display cases — and its Omnimax dome theater, one of the first in the world when it opened, gave San Diego audiences their first immersive large-format film experiences. Today the Science Center focuses on STEM education for the K-12 audience, running school programs that serve tens of thousands of students annually from across the San Diego Unified School District and neighboring districts. San Diego's identity as a biotech and research hub makes science education a civic priority.