The Society for Amateur Scientists Makes The Boston Globe--Again!

As reported in the 23 September 2005 installment of The Citizen Scientist, The Boston Globe carried a feature article about Dr. Shawn Carlson, the founder and Executive Director of the Society for Amateur Scientists, in its 12 September 2005 edition.

Now reporter Carolyn Y. Johnson has revisited amateur science with another feature article in The Boston Globe, "Citizen scientists: Armed with gadgets and a mean frog call, amateurs help professionals collect valuable data" (available here until about 3 November 2005; free registration required).

In an article that is well worth reading, Johnson writes about the full range of amateur science, including astronomy, ornithology, meteorology, geology and more.

Johnson quotes Shawn Carlson about the power of citizen scientists and describes the Society for Amateur Scientists as "a group that lobbies on behalf of the backyard tinkerer."

In a photo sidebar entitled "Profiles in Discovery," Johnson lists six amateur scientists of the past: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Banneker and Srinivasa Ramanujan. Banneker and Ramanujan are less well known than the other four. Banneker was a skilled watchmaker who became a successful astronomer and eclipse predictor. Ramanujan was among the world's most brilliant mathematicians.

Johnson's sidebar also lists two contemporary amateur scientists, Susan Hendrickson and your editor here at The Citizen Scientist. Hendrickson is cited for her discovery of Sue, the largest and most complete skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex. Sue is on display at Chicago's Field Museum. I am cited for writing the operator's manual for the first successful hobby computer, the Altair 8800, and for finding a calibration problem in a NASA ozone satellite (F. M. Mims III, Satellite Monitoring Error, Nature, 361, 505, 1993).

Forrest M. Mims III