The State of Science. Marc Zimmer

Radio: Cosmos and Culture, February 2, 2018.

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      Chapter 3

      Do-It-Yourself Science

      Citizen Science, the Amateur Scientist,

      Biohacking, and SciArt

      Chapter 2 looked at the demographics of today’s scientists and the need to increase the proportion of people of color and women in science. These scientists were employed in institutions such as industry, academia, national labs, and research hospitals. The vast majority had graduate degrees in science. A group of very interesting, very important scientists is making a resurgence: amateur scientists. They often have no postgraduate degrees in science and are not employed in the scientific sector. They do their scientific research purely for the love of science. They are amateur in the true sense of the word, the etymology of which harkens back to the Latin amatore, which means “lover or friend.”

      History of Amateur Scientists

      Amateur science has a storied past. Much of our early science was done by amateur scientists. Here I briefly introduce four of these pioneering amateurs—Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and Robert Evans—before turning to the new breed of amateur scientists we have come to know in modern science.

      Michael Faraday, born in 1791 in Newington, England, had no formal education. He grew up poor and learned to read and write in Sunday school. At age 14 he was apprenticed to a bookbinder. Through reading in his spare time he taught himself about electricity and chemistry. When one of chemist Humphrey Davy’s assistants was dismissed for brawling in 1812, Faraday managed to get a position working for Davy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Though an amateur in the sense that he had no formal education, Faraday would become one of the greatest experimentalists of the 19th century. Among his many breakthroughs was the invention of the first electric motor and dynamo. He pioneered the field of electrochemistry and discovered diamagnetism and benzene. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Davy’s greatest contribution to science was his discovery of Faraday, even though Davy himself discovered five new elements.

      Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction, describes Charles Darwin as the archetypical amateur scientist: “He did not have an advanced degree, and he worked for no one. He worked for himself—no institution.”^[1] To be fair, he did have a rich father to support him. The days when amateur scientists such as Darwin and Faraday were revolutionizing science are probably over. However,