Bill Nye/Mythbusters.
Honeydew, maybe. Strangepork was a quack.
Richard Dawkins has been getting a lot of attention lately, especially in Britain.
I’m not sure how you’d quantify this. But I’d guess that, if you polled a large sample of REAL American scientists, a big chunk of them would point to pop culture. WHICH role models inspired them probably varies by discipline.
That is, NASA’s most brilliant astronomers and rocket engineers were probably inspired by James T. Kirk and Montgomery Scott more than by Robert Godard.
On the other hand, a lot of marine biologists would probably admit that they grew up watching Jacques Cousteau specials. And numerous zoologists would probably give the nod to Marlin Perkins.
But is he really inspiring young people to study evolutionary biology, or just to scoff more loudly at organized religion?
A lot of mathematicians were inspired by Martin Gardner’s columns in Scientific American.
The Muppets (through Sesame Street) have introduced generations of children to everything from logic to basic mathematics to biology. Who knows how many people grew up to be scientists because they watched Grover demonstrating the difference between “near” and “far” when they were 5.
The “Why is it so?” man: Julius Sumner Miller.
Ah. Along those lines, I miss 1-2-3 Contact and Square One.
Alton Brown, Neil Degrassi Tyson, Discovery Channel (I love the whole world). For making science be interesting, entertaining and approachable. For shoving it in to silly things. I’d love to say someone like James Randi, but he preaches to the choir.
I am saying those for currently influential.
Hell, Mr. Tyson on The Daily Show did more for astronomy in 10 minutes than I could even believe. He made science look GOOD.
I wish more folks read Steven Hawking, or watched the Ted Talks, but that isn’t average Joe stuff. I used to love watching Jacques Cousteau, it was the highlight of my childhood. I’m thrilled that science is far more accessible now, in broader areas and in more tangible ways.
I think it’s tough make the case for anyone other than Sagan. Bringing science to people who weren’t into science was his main mission, but unlike Dawkins, for instance, he didn’t do so by just saying why science and critical thinking were right and other approaches to understanding the universe were wrong. He understood the yearning for meaning and beauty that undergirds the religious/quacksalver impulse, and rather than discounting it, he helped you understand that an appreciation of the natural world salved that yearning as well as anything. One assumes this was at least partly related to his parents’ deep religious belief.
Also – Bill Nye once swooped in and picked up a girl a friend of mine had been working all night, so props to him, too.
–Cliffy
I loved watching The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau when I was a kid. I’d pore over the books in the school library. In elementary school we took field trips to Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I developed a life-long love of the oceans.
When I was a kid Jacques Cousteau was The Great Promoter of oceanography. I learned a little about animals from Marlin Perkins on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I learned about space by watching Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the Apollo missions. And then there was Cosmos.
The Day The Universe Changed, and the same show with a different name that I do not recall, was fascinating and showed step-by-step developments in science (and other things) that lead to a particular invention. But Cosmos opened up the universe for me. Aboard Carl Sagan’s ‘ship of the imagination’ I was engrossed by his portrayal of biological, geological, and cosmic systems. Sagan presented his science in a way that was entertaining and accessible. Later there were Bill Nye the Science Guy, David Suzuki, and Michio Kaku. Entertaining and enlightening all, but I think their science shows might not have happened had it not been for Carl Sagan.
The Mechanical Universe, as presented by PBS.
I f&cking loved that show. Is it still being rerun?
E.O. Wilson deserves a mention.
Connections (I, II, and III)
I will go with the cast of Mythbusters/Carl Sagan/Steven Hawking not in any real order but kids love explosions and TV so maybe Mythbusters wins for popular appeal.
I did see a clip of one the animations played somewhere recently which made me go look for it. I did find somewhere that pbs can’t show it anymore or needs additional permission (or something like that) but the internet isn’t just for porn anymore.
What’s more, much of what he promotes is either highly speculative “science” (e.g. all his talk about memes) or philosophizing. Rather atrocious philosophizing at that, which is why I’d rather not call it “philosophy.”
A very important promoter of science, IMHO, was Johnny Carson. He made Sagan. He had authors on his show as guests, including science authors, promoting them to a wide audience. As a former magician Carson was a friend of James Randi, debunked “psychic” Uri Geller and publicized Randi’s debunking of “faith healer” Peter Popoff. Randi’s obit for Carson is here. Sure, science wasn’t Carson’s primary focus, but the science was delivered in an entertaining way to a huge audience.