Don Herbert
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Categories: 1917 births | 2007 deaths | American military personnel of World War II | American television personalities | Bone cancer deaths | Nickelodeon | People from Chicago | People from La Crosse, Wisconsin | People from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area | People from Ventura County, California | Recipients of US Distinguished Flying Cross | Science education | United States Army officers | American World War II pilots
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For other persons named Don Herbert, see Don Herbert (disambiguation).
Donald Jeffry Herbert (born Donald Herbert Kemske;[1][2] July 10 1917 – June 12 2007), better known as "Mr. Wizard", was the host of two popular television shows about science aimed at children.
BiographyEarly lifeHerbert was a general science and English major at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (then it was La Crosse State Normal College) who was interested in drama. His career as an actor was interrupted by World War II when he enlisted in the United States Army as a private. Herbert later joined the United States Army Air Forces, took pilot training, and became a B-24 bomber pilot who flew combat missions with the Fifteenth Air Force, flying out of a base in Italy. When Herbert was discharged in 1945, he was a captain and had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. Mr. WizardAfter the war, Herbert worked at a radio station in Chicago where he acted in children's programs such as the documentary health series It's Your Life (1949). It was during this time that Herbert formulated the idea of Mr. Wizard and a general science experiments show that utilized the new medium of television. Herbert's idea was accepted by the Chicago NBC station, and the series Watch Mr. Wizard premiered on March 3, 1951. The weekly 30-minute show featured Herbert as Mr. Wizard, with a young assistant who watched while Herbert performed interesting science experiments.[3] The experiments, many of which seemed impossible at first glance, were usually simple enough to be re-created by viewers. The show was very successful. 547 live episodes were created before it was canceled in 1965. Herbert won a Peabody Award for his work on the program in 1953.[4] After his show was canceled, Herbert produced films for junior and senior high schools, wrote several books on science, and in 1969 developed a Mr. Wizard Science Center located outside Boston, Massachusetts. (The center no longer exists.) The show Watch Mr. Wizard was briefly revived by NBC in the 1971 – 1972 season. Image:Mr wizards world opening title shot.jpg
Opening credits of Mr. Wizard's World
In 1983, Herbert developed Mr. Wizard's World, a faster-paced version of his show that was shown three times a week on the cable channel Nickelodeon. The show ran until 1990, and reruns were shown until 2000, making it the longest running show on Nickelodeon. In 1993, children's science show Beakman's World paid homage to Herbert by naming its two penguin puppet characters "Don" and "Herb" after him. In 1994, Herbert developed another new series of 15-minute spots called Teacher to Teacher with Mr. Wizard. The spots highlighted individual elementary science teachers and their projects. The series was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and was shown on Nickelodeon. Herbert died of multiple myeloma on June 12, 2007, at his home in Bell Canyon, California.[4] Awards
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