 Among his Ph.D. graduate students were Richard H. Solomon and Susan Shirk, both of whom were political scientists who served in the United States government, and Richard Samuels.Pye helped found the Committee on Comparatives Politics for the Social Science Research Council, along with other social scientists seeking alternative explanations for change than those offered by Marxism.Pye became one of the pioneers in the 1950s and 1960s in developing theories about the political development and modernization of Third World nations.