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Your favorite populizer of science?
- Thread starter Jumi
- Start date
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Werner von Braun, Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert), Bill Nye, & Neil Degrasse Tyson
When I was in elementary school, I would often check out astronomy books from the library written by Isaac Asimov. For that reason, he had a lot to do with my early learning experiences with science. I'd put Bill Nye on my list for the same reason, thanks to his television show. I became acquainted with Stephen Hawking in junior high school when I checked out "A Brief History of Time". Quite a good book. I currently own several books by Michio Kaku as well, so he's also had a big influence on my knowledge. I also just like hearing him talk. Then you've got Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the newest one to me.
EDIT: Crap, I didn't notice that this was the atheism DIR. My bad.
EDIT: Crap, I didn't notice that this was the atheism DIR. My bad.
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Sapiens
Polymathematician
I guess names without any information is not good. Everyone knows Sagan, Smith and Borek may be lesser known, but were part of my adolescence and undergraduate years.
Homer Smith: From Fish to Philosopher, can be read on line here.
Ernest Borek: The Atoms Within Us; The Code of Life; The Sculpture of Life; Man, the Chemical Machine.
Homer Smith: From Fish to Philosopher, can be read on line here.
Ernest Borek: The Atoms Within Us; The Code of Life; The Sculpture of Life; Man, the Chemical Machine.
Kuzcotopia
If you can read this, you are as lucky as I am.
Agreed with Asimov, Sagan, and DeGrasse.
I would also add Brian Greene's documentary on string
theory. The visuals really laid it out clearly and helped me understand the broad strikes of how space-time and quantum mechanics work, and how they fail to work with each other.
I would also add Brian Greene's documentary on string
theory. The visuals really laid it out clearly and helped me understand the broad strikes of how space-time and quantum mechanics work, and how they fail to work with each other.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
Sagan's Demon Haunted World was very influential in helping me get back to critical thinking as a young adult. When I started reading I entertained various pseudoscientific ideas, that were popular among friends. Sagan nudged me gently in the right direction. It was like medicine that helped me clear my mind. If I could put a pricetag on the book how much it was worth to me back then it would easily be thousands of € or $.
Feynman was the one who got me interested in physics, I recently got one of his Lectures on Physics as a gift along with Brian Greene's Hidden Dimensions and a couple of books by less well known names.
DeGrasse Tyson is easily my favorite today and a recent acquiantance. Always enlightening and charismatic, both me and my significant other love his sense of humor. Still haven't gotten round to reading any of his books yet. I hope his humor comes through as well in books as it does when watching him speak.
Thanks @Sapiens I will read Homer Smith's book from that link and Ernest Borek sounds really interesting.
Feynman was the one who got me interested in physics, I recently got one of his Lectures on Physics as a gift along with Brian Greene's Hidden Dimensions and a couple of books by less well known names.
DeGrasse Tyson is easily my favorite today and a recent acquiantance. Always enlightening and charismatic, both me and my significant other love his sense of humor. Still haven't gotten round to reading any of his books yet. I hope his humor comes through as well in books as it does when watching him speak.
Thanks @Sapiens I will read Homer Smith's book from that link and Ernest Borek sounds really interesting.
freethinker44
Well-Known Member
Not a scientist, but I say Gene Roddenberry.
Kuzcotopia
If you can read this, you are as lucky as I am.
Yes! Not sure if it meets the requirements of the OP, but Gene's fiction influenced my perspective on the hope and decency I see in humanity, and for what lies just beyond our current growing pains as we shed our comforting mythologies of religion.
"It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning." - Roddenberry
gsa
Well-Known Member
Carl Sagan, hands down. I read The Demon-Haunted World when I was in middle school, and it had (and continues to have) a profound impact on me. The chapter that continues to stick out in my mind is on hypnotherapy and satanic panic/child sexual abuse allegations, as well as the related phenomenon, this one very big in the 1990s at the time, of alien abduction. In law school I took a course on expert evidence and was astonished at some of the rulings admitting hypnotherapy evidence. Thankfully, there were some skeptical appellate courts that acted as gatekeepers and reversed convictions based on what was clearly pseudoscience in hindsight, but there were just as many failures, many that probably escaped notice.
I also loved reading Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and David Brin around this time. Their work did quite a bit to popularize science, expressly in some cases and implicitly in others.
Today, I would say that one of my favorites is Neil Degrasse Tyson. I also appreciate Richard Dawkins.
I also loved reading Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and David Brin around this time. Their work did quite a bit to popularize science, expressly in some cases and implicitly in others.
Today, I would say that one of my favorites is Neil Degrasse Tyson. I also appreciate Richard Dawkins.
