If you want to know who founded Modern Orthodoxy, then I suggest that you read the biographies of Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch.
Here are a few quotes from one of his biographies:
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Behold! G_d speaks to you through nature, and again through history!…
Rabbi Hirsch’s positive view of the study of secular
subjects was not limited to science and history.
SOURCE: Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman (chapter 17, pages 204 to 205), year 1996 CE, ArtScroll History Series, Brooklyn NY 11232
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“The girls in the [Orthodox] Realschule [which was founded and directed by Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch] studied the same subjects, including Chumash and Hebrew grammar, as the boys, except for Talmud and mathematics, in place of which they were taught handicrafts.”
SOURCE: Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman (chapter 19, page 223), year 1996 CE, ArtScroll History Series, Brooklyn 11232, ISBN 0-89906-632-1.
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“Rabbi Hirsch preferred honest Gentile teachers for secular subjects over non-observant Jews, who he felt would have a negative influence.”
SOURCE: Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman,
year 1996 CE, ArtScroll History Series, Brooklyn 11232, ISBN 0-89906-632-1.
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In [year] 1888 [CE], the Prussian government issued a decree requiring all students to take standardized examinations, which were to be administered on the Sabbath.
No special dispensation was granted to Jewish students to take the exam on a different day.
Rabbi Hirsch authored a petition to the Prussian Minister of Education Gossler, signed by 115 Rabbis from all of Germany, stating that all writing on the Sabbath was prohibited by Jewish law…soon before his passing Rabbi Hirsch received a reply from the Minister of Education assuring him that school principals would be permitted to “judge sympathetically” requests to defer the examination to a weekday.
SOURCE: Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman (chapter 19, page 231) year 1996 CE, ArtScroll History Series, Brooklyn 11232 ISBN 0-89906-632-1
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Rabbi Shmuel Landau, the son of [the author of] Noda BeYehudah and his successor as Rabbi of Prague, also expressed his approbation for [secular] studies directly related to earning a living:
“[One should] learn German thoroughly, as well as other required subjects, because without German, including written German, it is impossible to survive in these countries.
Someone who does not read and write German cannot succeed in any trade, and every father has an obligation to teach his son the language and customs of the country in which he lives…”
SOURCE: Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman (chapter 18, page 210) year 1996 CE, ArtScroll History Series, Brooklyn 11232 ISBN 0-89906-632-1