The Pan-American Association for Physics received support to establish the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP) in the form of grants from the Sloan Foundation. An initial organizing meeting was held at the University of Texas at Austin in May 1995, under the leadership of David Ernst, Carlos Ordonez, and Jorge Lopez. The Founding Meeting of the Society was held at the University of Texas at Austin in April, 1996 and the first annual meeting was held in Houston, Texas in October 1997.