Mr. Wizard is Dead, and We Are Killing Science
Don Herbert, best known as Mr. Wizard, passed away last week. Mr. Wizard taught and inspired two generations of children on his television shows Watch Mr. Wizard (1951-1965) and Mr. Wizard’s World (1983-1990).
More than just demonstrating how to measure the height of a tree from by its shadow, Mr. Wizard taught kids two very important lessons. First, he taught them that science is about how the world works, and the world doesn’t always work the way you think it does.
Second, he taught them that science was not just for old men in lab coats with millions of dollars of equipment, that a lot of interesting experiments and demonstrations could be done with household objects and a little adult supervision.
This is a particularly bad time in our nation’s history to lose Mr. Wizard, because science is being attacked on exactly those two points.