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Sciencey Heroes For Young Children?

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-about-godzilla? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Unhappy that all his friends have heroes he knows nothing about (they've all chosen hockey players — actually a hockey player: Sidney Crosby), my eight-year-old son asked me if I would find him a 'cool hero.' When pressed to define 'cool,' he very earnestly gave me this list of acceptable professions: 'Astronauts, explorers, divers, scientists, and pilots.' A second and only slightly less worthy tier of occupations includes 'inventors, meteorologists, and airplane designers.' To be eligible for hero status, an individual must be (1) accomplished in one of these fields, (2) reasonably young (it pains me to report that Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, NASA's youngest astronaut and now just 31, barely makes the cut), and, critically to my naive son's way of thinking, (3) respected by third graders nationwide. Ignoring that last criterion, or not, what heroes would you suggest from the sciences as people whose lives and accomplishments would be compelling to an eight-year-old mind?"

13 of 614 comments (clear)

  1. Age is a Problem by TheWanderingHermit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    His friends are all looking at sports heroes and you're looking at people with long careers. There's a big difference.

    Athletes only have a few decades in which they'll do well, then they retire. So it's easy to find a younger athlete as a hero: as they get older, they lose it.

    But almost all the other professions take time to get experienced in. They require learning and years of experience to excel, other than something like astronaut, which can include younger people.

    Too bad you can't include people like Chuck Yeager or Wiley Post.

    1. Re:Age is a Problem by pla · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But almost all the other professions take time to get experienced in. They require learning and years of experience to excel, other than something like astronaut, which can include younger people.

      Actually, you have that backward. Astronauts require YEARS of training, which usually doesn't even start until they've had a reasonable distinguished early military career.

      Most of the "rock stars" of science made their contributions while still quite young... Einstein published on special Relativity at 24, James Watson (of Watson & Crick) published on the structure of DNA (which he later admitted to "discovering" while trippin' balls) at 25. Alan Turing published his On Computable Numbers... at 24 and built the world's first real computer at 32.

      I could go on.

  2. Re:Peter Parker? by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Back in the day, real photographers were all chemists. Thus the photography link with a chemistry kit (and web fluid).

  3. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist by Allyoop · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Neil deGrasse Tyson I wish I read his book "The Universe Down to Earth" when I was in grade 9. I think it would have greatly shaped my school pathway for a 'real' science career. http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/

  4. NIKOLA TESLA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    See subject-line...

    APK

    P.S.=> He's a PRIME EXAMPLE of that "once in a generation mind"... apk

  5. Willy Messerschmitt by germansausage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Airplane Designer Hero - got to be Willy Messerschmitt!

  6. Elon Musk by francium+de+neobie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla... you can literally change the world with technology, and get reasonably rich doing that.

  7. Thor Hyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki crew were my heroes by dbIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not only did they test out a migration theory by sailing across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft, half of them were extreme badass commandos that blew up a Nazi nuclear facility in WWII.
    Then there's the Easter Island stuff. While crappy TV shows say "who knows why these roads go into the sea" Thor put on the scuba gear and found they were boat ramps. When the crappy TV show said "who knows how the statues were erected" Thor asked the locals, put on a huge BBQ for them and they showed him how it was done.
    Then of course there are plenty of other examples of people in science doing things kids will find heroic - vulcanologists in rubber boats on acid lakes, polar explorers and many others.

  8. Another Brian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about another Brian, a bona fide rock star (i.e. older than most people on /.) and also astrophysicist. Took a detour from his PhD work to play lead guitar for the British rock band Queen. Finally finished his PhD in 2007. Is one step from away from knighthood.

  9. Ray Kurzweil by BlueMonk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    He's an inventor, scientist, author, futurist, musician and probably plenty more I don't even know about. And he's still alive... and hopes to be alive forever due to evolving technology.

  10. Galois by onionman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Galois (look him up!!) is long dead, but he was quite possibly the greatest genius ever to walk the planet. Too bad he was killed in a sword fight when he was 20. As a teenager, he solved a centuries-old math problem and created a fundamental branch of advanced mathematics.

  11. Re:Outreach by FrameRotBlues · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Luckily, someone did a rewrite.

    http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/spirit_rewrite_unknown_author.png

  12. Emily Rosa - She's still young (early 20's) by VShael · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a 9 year old girl, she debunked the whole Therapeutic Touch nonsense, with a sensible experimental design.

    If it helps, she grew up to be a smoking hottie, as well as having brains to burn. IMO, young kids could look
    up to her for both her critical thinking skills, and the way she was no swayed by arguments-from-authority of
    the "we're older than you, so we know better" sort.