[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Welcome to id the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Well, today my guest is Texan, engineer, inventor, writer, and self taught scientist Forrest Mims. Mims recounts his adventures as an amateur scientist in the recent memoir Maverick Scientist. One chapter in maverick scientist details Mims experience of winning the 1993 Rolex Award for Enterprise, and that is the subject of our chat today. We're going to talk about the work that led to that honor, the memorable trip to Switzerland to receive the award, and how the Rolex Award furthered Forrest's career as a scientist. Named by Discover magazine as one of the 50 best brains in science, Mims has forged a distinguished scientific career. Despite having no formal academic training in science, Mims is an instrument designer, science writer, and independent science consultant. He has published over 60 books with publishers that include McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall, RadioShack, and others. His RadioShack books alone sold 7.5 million copies. MIMSS scientific papers have appeared in peer reviewed journals such as Nature Science, Photochemistry and Photobiology, the Journal of Molecular Evolution, the Journal of Geophysical Research, Applied Optics, and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. His columns have been published in numerous Scientific American, popular electronics, modern electronics, the citizen scientist, and more. And Mims has also consulted for a number of official scientific bodies, including NASA, NOAA, and the Environmental Protection Agency and I chuckled. You sent me a link Forrest. Dave Jones from the electronics engineering video blog on YouTube recently. Put it this way, if you don't know Forrest Mims III, I guess you're, well, a young whippersnapper. I thought that was funny. Forest, it's great to have you back.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm glad to be back.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, in our last conversation together, we discussed your research in twilight science, including the decades of measurements you've been taking on photometers you built yourself. We're going to build on that today by discussing an award you received that played a really big role in your budding science career, the Rolex Award for Enterprise.
Now, Rolex, of course, is well known the world over for crafting high quality, innovative timepieces, and the companys philosophy summed up in their trade work, word perpetual is an unceasing quest for excellence, to explore and to share human knowledge to build a better world.
Which is why for more than four decades, the Rolex Award for Enterprise has supported individuals with innovative projects that improve life, expand knowledge, and propose solutions to major challenges. And get this, the program is still going today, and we'll later discuss how you listening and watching today might be able to win your own Rolex award for enterprise if you have a project in mind. So we'll get to that towards the end of the interview. But first for us, let's go back to 1989. Wait, that sounds like a Taylor Swift album. By this year, you'd found some success as an inventor and author of electronics books for RadioShack and as a magazine columnist. You were inspired to submit a proposal to take over the long running and popular column in America's oldest magazine, Scientific American. After you prepared a 20 page proposal to them with 30 plus topics of what you might write about and copies of your books that you'd written so far, they flew you to New York to discuss how you could give the magazine a shot in the arm. Tell us what happened next.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Well, all went very well in the interview with the editor, Jonathan Peale.
Unfortunately, he asked, what other magazines have you written for? And I made a big mistake because I said, well, popular photography, Texas parks and wildlife. And I named a few others. And then I said, and here's the mistake. And some christian magazines. And his complexion changed, his demeanor changed. His bow tie began to flip up and down. And he said, what have you written for christian magazines? And I said, how to take church kids on a 1000 miles bicycle trip. And then that didn't impress him. He just said, sit there. I'll be right back. And then he ran down the. Opened his office door and ran down the hallway to his other editors and said, red alert. Red alert. Mims is a creationist. We have to figure out a way to get rid of him. And the reason I know what he said is because one of the assistant editors was eleven years old when he joined a rocket club that I started in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I didn't know him, but his name was Tim Appenzeller. He's now become a very famous science writer for the journal Science. Anyway, Tim later told me about Peel's excitement about this and that I must not be allowed to write for the magazine.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds like a case of revealing one too many details, especially details that can get you nixed from things. Of course, we at Discovery Institute and in the intelligent design community know all about that. Well, in the dozens of radio interviews you did following this scientific american controversy, you write that you kept Charles Darwin's own books on your desk and would read from them to the occasional skeptics that would call in to challenge you and your beliefs. If Darwin could doubt his theory, why can't I? You ask in your book, maverick scientist so why was this approach, reading Darwin's own words, effective in responding to critics of your skepticism over darwinian evolution?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Well, I suspect that they would have thought I would say something about the Bible. The only books I had on my desk during those over 100 radio interviews, this book here and this book here, this is written by Charles Darwin. And in this book here, he questions his own theory and suggests that only one hand has created the universe. And this book here, which is his book on the origin of species, by the way, I've only met two people who've actually read the book. He has a whole section doubting his own theory, and that's good science, by the way. One should always point out the objections to one's theory. Darwin did that. But when I would read these passages over the radio, it just shocked these people who were pro evolution, and they did not know how to respond. So I must say I was able to win every debate on the radio simply by reading Darwin's own thoughts.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah, a very good approach. And so the scientific american dust up, you know, made national headlines. You were doing lots of interviews explaining it, and this editor at Scientific American said, that's it. We're done. You're not going to be in the pages of scientific american again. Now, your three columns that you had already written for them did appear, but as far as they were concerned, that was. That was it, as far as you and the pages of Scientific American. But of course, the Rolex of war changed that, and that's kind of a funny thing.
So. Okay, let's move on then. On June 15, 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted with a massive plume of volcanic debris and gases heading into the atmosphere. How did this event, this natural event, affect you and your career?
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Well, that eruption was considered the second biggest eruption of the the last century. It was very close to the biggest eruption, which was 1912, in AlASkA. But I started measuring the atmosphere, the haze in the atmosphere, the ozone layer, and so on, the water vapor. On the 5 February 1990, that was my son's birthday. And so I had a fair amount of data when the volcano erupted. And then by the time the aerosols, the ash from that volcano, reached my location in TexAs, I was fully prepared for it. And so I could actually see in my data the impact those aerosols were having on the. On sunlight coming through the atmosphere.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Okay, so your instruments were able to detect pretty immediately the changes caused by this eruption. And you write in your book that by 1992, it was CleAR that your tops ozone instrument could measure the ozone layer pretty much just as well as NASA's own satellites.
Is that accurate?
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Not only that, this is my homemade ozone instrument. The NASA folks, the scientists at NASA, are very, very helpful in providing ozone data measured by their satellite instrument on the Nimbus seven satellite. And so I tracked that data very, very well for a year and a half, and then there started to become a split where they were showing a lot. The difference in ozone was becoming about 3%. And so I would tell them this, and they would say, well, they're very polite rail forrest, we have a multi million dollar project here with a big staff, and you just have that one instrument. And I said, well, actually, I've got two instruments, and they're both showing the same error. And that got their attention. And so they promised that they would take a serious look at what I had found.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it would be so easy for them to dismiss this sort of amateur science, you know, and homemade instruments, and yet you didn't give them much choice to be able to do that. And this does figure into your Rolex story, as we'll mention in a moment.
But what did you decide to apply for with the Rolex award? I know you had done it once before and got a runner up honorable mention for your project.
What did you propose to them regarding ozone layer measurements?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I really thought that the scientific american affair would have turned them off on me, and so I almost didn't apply, but I went ahead and applied because the decline in ozone that followed the eruption of Mount Pinatubo was a major development in the scientific community. And I thought they might be pretty interested in if somebody could get an award to get more of these measurements made around the planet, not just at one place in Texas and then with one satellite.
So that was the main issue there.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: And your proposal to Rolex was a global network of these devices all over the place so people could make ground based measurements from all over the world and really get a good handle on this, because let's face it, back in the early nineties, the ozone layer was very much in the news. It was very much on people's minds. People were worried that, you know, global warming was, was really speeding up. And so this was seen by Rolex as a very important project. Now, they sent a film crew to your house to document your work after they, you know, accepted your proposal and awarded you this, you know, this recognition. Tell us what happened when the film crew came to your house.
You received a fax, didn't you?
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yes. In fact, while we were driving to my office. I told them that NASA was strongly considering my information, that there was a problem with the satellite. And I said, they're supposed to send me a fax today to let me know their decision. And so the producer said, that's interesting. So we get to my office and we walk in there and there's a fax curled up on my desk. So I reached for the fax, and the producer says, don't touch that fax. I said, why not? He says, I've been filming Rolex award winners and Nobel Prize award winners for 20 years. I've never seen real science. They always fake it or try to duplicate what they discovered. If this is real, I want to get it live on film. So then he said, I want you to go outside on your front porch, and we're going to get the camera ready, the lights ready, the sound ready, and all that. And then when I call you, I want you to come back in. So that we did all that, and it took a good five or six minutes at least to set up all their equipment. So I walk back in, and then the producer, he just says, you may read your facts. And he points at it. So I read the facts in Bingo, that it was NASA acknowledging that, yes, they had found an error. And then, really interesting, the NASA scientist called to discuss all this while the film crew is still in the office. And the producer said, can I talk to him? And I said, well, let me ask him. And the scientist, Doctor McPeters, a very good scientist, agreed to speak with the Rolex film guy. And that's in the video that you can watch online, even today?
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, rolex.org. it still has your profile, and the video is right there. So I encourage viewers and listeners to check that out. Well, so off you went to Switzerland to receive this award. What kind of things did you see on your trip? It was quite memorable.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: It was Minnie and I took the glacier Express, and that was a beautiful trip to Switzerland. It was in May. And so there's still lots of snow in the mountainous areas. And then in Geneva, where the Rolex is located, we saw some very scenic things there, including some of the very early churches. And Minnie loves Belle. So we climbed up to the bell tower of one of these churches as it was ringing. That was a big treat for her, but the biggest treat was the people I got to meet.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Yeah, indeed. In fact, you were surprised the morning of the ceremony to be escorted to it by one of your childhood heroes, Sir Edmund Hillary, no less than the first man to climb Mount Everest. What was that like?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Well, when I was ten years old, this was National Geographic magazine, and the first two articles were triumph on Everest and Gilbert, then President Eisenhower presents the Hubbard medal to the Everest conquerors. That included Sir Edmund.
And so here you have the man who was my lifetime hero since a child. The lady called the hotel room said, now you and your wife can come downstairs where your escort is here. So we go down there, and there's this elderly gentleman standing there with this Rolex lady. And she introduced me to Sir Edmund Hillary. I almost fell down. That was my childhood hero. And he was a judge, or one of the, on the panel judges for the Rolex prize. So we spent all day long with Sir Edmund and did some touring around and had a dinner with him and so on.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Wow. And it must have been quite cool to realize that he didn't really want to talk about his exploits on Mount Everest. It was more about your work on the ozone lair.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: That's exactly right. He's a very humble man. Unfortunately, he's passed away. He's a very humble man. He did not want to talk about his huge world famous exploits. He wanted to talk about, how do you measure ozone with one of these? And so that's what we did. There's a picture of him and me sitting together at the banquet table, and I'm pointing to a glass of orange juice, and I'm trying to explain the layer of pulp, and that orange juice resembles the ozone layer.
He enjoyed that. And by the way, this scientific american also has a fantastic article about transistors that began my electronics career. So this National Geographic that had his article, had this fabulous article, new miracles of the telephone age. And that's. So it did two things. I had no idea I would ever meet Sir Edmund Hillary, but I did have an idea that someday I would become an electronics person.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. What an honor. Well, so what did you receive from Rolex? What did they give you as an award?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: They gave us two things at the meeting, or actually three things. They gave us a check for $32,500. I believe that's the amount today. It's $100,000 because of inflation. They also gave us, there were five of us, five award winners. They gave us these incredible posters. They're called scrolls. They're too big to show in one image here. And this is a real honor to get one of these. There's a lot of work. It's very personalized. Then they gave each of us a gold Rolex.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: There it is.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Ordinarily, I don't wear this.
In fact, special occasions, very special. You can't see it, but on the back, well, you can't see it on the back. It's engraved, has your name in the Rolex award and so forth. I gave a talk at a Rolex meeting in Los Angeles several years ago, and I was warned, don't wear your Rolex on the streets of Los Angeles because you will not come back with it.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Very true. And you would not want that one stolen. That one's very special. Well, I appreciated that you quoted scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell in your book, saying, whenever you can measure a phenomenon, you have a basis upon which may be built a science. In fact, Bell says, science is dependent on measurement. And I think it's funny that even on the flight home from the Rolex awards ceremony, you're doing your signs, you're taking your measurements. Tell us briefly what happened on that flight.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Well, again, starting in 1990, I was also measuring the total water vapor overhead. And I love to do that from airplanes because you're way above most of the water vapor and you have the window in between you and the atmosphere, but you can subtract that when you know how much water vapor there is. And so I was measuring water vapor outside the window of this, and we're flying in first class. That was a big deal for my wife and me. And this flight attendant kept looking at us. My wife kept saying, they're looking at you, they're going to get you. You better stop doing it. And she was writing down the numbers for me all this time. So finally, the flight attendant goes up to the cockpit. Then she comes back and says, the captain would have you present your instruments to me immediately. So I gave her my stuff, and I remember I had a brochure from the Rolex awards. I gave her that brochure. She goes up to the, see the pilot and comes back five minutes later with a big smile. The captain would like you to accompany me to the, to the cockpit of the aircraft. And I followed her. And the captain's very friendly, and the co pilot's very friendly, and they have me sit down in this chair in between them. And for 30 minutes, I got 25 minutes. I got to sit in the seat of this aircraft, flying at 37,000ft. I could see contrails right next to the plane. I'd never been that close to contrails before, so that was a big deal.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Wow. And you ended up spending a half an hour with the pilots chatting about your work.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Taking instruments on airplanes can be a problem, and I don't like them to be x rayed because that can damage the sensors. So I was in Geneva one, not Geneva, but in another city in Switzerland once. I was teaching a course there, and I didn't want my equipment to be x rayed. I said, I'll be glad to take it apart. You can look at every aspect. So the flight attendants and the people, they called the airport boss instead. Two armed guards show up, and they've got rifles and pistols. They're in uniformity, and they demand that I present my instrument. And I very politely said, no, thank you. I can't do that. So then they call the boss himself. He shows up, and then meanwhile, there's a big crowd gathering, and a chinese woman walks by and says, can't you see he's harmless? He's not going to bother anybody. And then I remembered the Rolex brochure that got me the ride on the airplane. So I presented that to the airport guy. He immediately changes his tune. Fantastic. A Rolex award. And he's talking to the crowd of people, and everybody gets all excited, and the guards get all excited. They let me go through the x ray without x raying anything, not even my regular suitcase. So that was an unusual experience.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. I mean, you can't be too careful when it comes to flights and security, even back then. But, of course, all of this is outlined in your book Maverick scientist, and we'll tell folks how to get a hold of that soon. So. But while your initial idea of a global network that you had proposed to Rolex didn't pan out in the end quite the way you wanted it to, mostly due to logistical challenges. Your micro tops two units, which were funded by Rolex award money. They've been used around the world since 1995 at fixed sites, aboard ships, and also on scientific expeditions. So in what other ways did the Rolex award give your scientific career a major boost?
[00:20:35] Speaker B: The instruments that we built with the Rolex money looked like this, and they worked fine. But we couldn't use high quality optical filters for the ultraviolet rays of sunlight that we were looking to measure, that I was looking to measure. And then the worst problem, we couldn't ship these to foreign countries because of all the different restrictions on sending electronics to other countries. Meanwhile, the filters degrade to terrible. So the instruments no longer working well, even though my son and I calibrated them at the Mauna Loa observatory.
But the solar light company was fascinated that the ones that were still working were very closely measuring the ozone to professional instruments that the EPA had put in my backyard in our field over here, and they bought the wrights and they developed microtops two. And this is one of the very first ones. I've been using this one since 1995, and it's spectacular. It's maintained its calibration. A few years ago, NOAA hired me to calibrate the world standard ozone instrument, Dobson 83. And I was able to calibrate this one right next to Dobson 83. I was within a little over 1% difference. And so after 20 some odd years, that's pretty remarkable. So as far as customs and shipping to other countries, I don't have to worry about that. The manufacturer takes care of all of that. And so these are, like you said, these are used all around the world by scientists and by science students to measure the ozone layer, the water vapor layer, and the haze in the atmosphere.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Okay, so are these machines still being made, or are they the original ones that were purchased by people and they're still working?
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Yeah, they're still being made.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: And I don't know how many are out there, but it's over 1000. And so my original goal of setting up a worldwide network never happened. But meanwhile, we have a better goal where we've got many, many people measuring the ozone layer all around the planet.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Well, I also wanted to point out, as I mentioned earlier on the program here, that the Rolex award for Enterprise is still an active program today. So those who are listening and watching, if you're a budding scientist and have an original, innovative idea that needs funding, you might want to consider it. And while you're at rolex.org learning about it, like I said, you can go on and look at Forest's page. They still have his profile and that original 1993 documentary, which is quite enjoyable to watch, just detailing his work at the time. So it's pretty cool that they are still highlighting you in this way. Now, forest, last question for you. What advice would you give to young scientists who might be interested in trying to get their own projects funded or are watching your conversation today?
[00:23:18] Speaker B: That's a very important question. First of all, the number of people who actually win the award is just a tiny fraction of the thousands who apply. So, number one, make sure you have a really, really good idea. Number two, if you've actually done some work on your idea, that's also very important. The Rolex judges will be looking for that. If the person they're considering has done some actual research or development or whatever, he's got a much higher chance or she has women can win this award, not just men. Anybody can win the award. If you could develop a new way to generate electricity that causes little or no air pollution, that type of thing would really attract their attention. If you could develop a simple course for teaching advanced science. Even though it's advanced, it can still be taught simply. That might be a good candidate. If you want to show how people can measure the climate over there where they live for the past 50 to 100 years, learn how to count tree rings on trees that have maybe a storm knocked down a tree, you take a section of that. If that tree is in an area that wasn't getting artificially watered, you can determine how old that tree is. And by measuring the width of the rings in the trunk, you can tell how much rain had fallen each year. So that's three rough ideas. There's many, many other ideas that are out there, and I advise the anybody who wants to apply for an award to carefully study the website and see some of the other awards that people have received.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And in the categories of science and technology, environmental protection, anything that is going to further the cause of humanity and help others is really something that could be considered. So, yeah, I do encourage folks who are, who are watching or listening who might have an idea, pursue it. You know, I think Forrest's work stands as a testimony to just really moving forward with ideas that you have and not to get held back by doubt or by those in positions of power who would say, nah, that's. That's homemade. Forget about it. Because, you know, even NASA can be proven wrong, and Forrest has shown that, and he's still working with NASA today. So it wasn't a nasty thing. Hey, you're wrong and I'm right. This was a collaborative effort, and that is how science advances. Right. Whether you're an amateur scientist or a PhD at Harvard doesn't really matter. As long as you are doing science honestly and you are willing to share your results, other people can join in. So, Forrest, thank you for relaying this chapter to us. And again, how do folks get a hold of your awesome book, Maverick Scientist?
[00:26:04] Speaker B: It's on Amazon, and it's also available from discovery.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. So the address to go order your own copy is discovery.org maverick. That'll take you there. Discovery.org maverick. And I do a lot of these interviews, and I like to dive into as much of the books as I can when I'm talking to authors. But this one I just keep coming back to because it's written that way. As stories and cool experiences. So it doesn't have to be read cover to cover. You can just, you know, kind of hop back and forth. But I've been really enjoying it, and I recommend it to you, to all of you. So thank you for us for your time. And we'll be back again another time to unpack more of your adventures as an amateur scientist.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Thank you, andrew.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Well, as I said, discovery.org maverick is where you can get a copy of the book, and I do encourage you to do so. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. For id the future, I'm andrew Mcdermott. Take care.
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