1983-1990: Mr. Wizard’s World on Nickelodeon. We didn’t have cable, but my grandparents did, and Grandpa would tape it for me to watch at home or when I was visiting them.
I think it was on local public television stations. Some of the tapes have a “Thirteen” logo, which I believe is New York’s public TV station. My eighth grade science teacher used to bring tapes to class for us to watch.
YEAH! Julius Sumner Miller ruled!
THIS! And thank you for helping me remember his name.
Bill Nye, with Mr. Wizard a close second. The latter still had his TV show going when I was in 1st or 2nd grade or so, and the former hit PBS when I was in junior high.
Add me to the list! He seems happiest when an experiment failed.
They ALWAYS failed!
Spock.
Seriously? I scrolled all the way to the bottom to see my answer taken?
I guess I’m not being truthful anyway. It was the engineering department I used to pretend to be in. Sciences seemed so stuffy.
Why is it so???
I always got a kick out of this guy, too:
[QUOTE=txjim]
Add me to the list! He seems happiest when an experiment failed.
[/QUOTE]
<Julius Sumner Miller> The experiment did not fail, rather, I failed to meet the requirements of nature.</JSM>
Ted in Police Squad!
No, really, when I was growing up, it was Don Herbert, aka Mr. Wizard.
You must be from my generation. I used to watch him as Professor Wonderful on reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club. I looked forward to taking his physics class when I started attending El Camino College, but he retired from the position the year before I got there.
When I was a little girl in the 1950s, I wanted to marry Mr. Wizard (AKA Don Herbert). He was good-looking, kindly, and very, very smart. My second choice would’ve been Dr. Research (AKA Frank C. Baxter), of the Bell Laboratory Science Series. Dr. Baxter was not as good-looking as Mr. Wizard, but he seemed to be just as smart and kind.
Quite a few years later, I married a non-famous science guy who is good-looking, kindly, and smart. If it hadn’t been for my girlish crushes on science nerds, I probably wouldn’t have ended up with such a great husband.
When I think of “science guy,” the first thing that comes to my mind is The Professor on Gilligan’s Island. 
Fictional, I know.
I’m another Mr. Wizard fan, here.
And from what I’ve seen of Bill Nye, I’m not impressed. He seems to place a much higher priority on “making science seem zany” than on “teaching science”, and the episodes I’ve seen have had nearly as much wrong as right.
He was always my favorite character (right up there with Mary Ann :o ). Seriously, I’ll bet he inspired a lot of young people to take an interest in science.
I should also mention my friend and mentor Dr Sherman Schultz, who was for many years Professor of Astronomy at Macalester College in St Paul, MN.* He did a show on the local PBS station back in the days when it was still known as “the educational channel.”
I remember reading Roy Chapman Andrews’ books on dinosaurs back when I was just a little kid. What a fascinating life he led!
I also had the pleasure of attending one of Dr Karlos Kaufmanos’s famous lectures on the Star of Bethlehem 30-odd years ago. My God, could that man tell a story!
*He was also the namesake for Shermy in Peanuts.
I loved me some 3-2-1 Contact. I think I became a scientist in large part due to that single program.
Mr. Wizard on Nickelodeon for me in the 80s. For whatever reason the time he showed how calories are in food by burning breakfast cereal always stands out in my memory.
Beakman was pretty cool when he came along. Good energy, and that’s the first time I saw the swinging bowling ball in the face trick. I was a little older, and Mr. Wizard had covered much of the same material.
Bill Nye? I love him, but by the time he got his show I had outgrown those types of shows, and his image was tainted for me by seeing him do sketch comedy on Almost Live. In fact it was on that show that he first used the “science guy” persona, especially in one segment showing how futile jumping in a falling elevator would be by crushing an egg in a scale experiment.