Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to millions of young Baby Boomers on television in the 1950s and ’60s as “Mr Wizard” and did the same for a later generation of youngsters on the Nickelodeon cable TV channel in the 1980s, died Tuesday. He was 89.
Mr. Herbert died at his home in Bell Canyon after a long battle with multiple myeloma, said Tom Nikosey, Mr. Herbert’s son-in-law.
A low-key, avuncular presence who wore a tie and white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Mr. Herbert launched his weekly half-hour science show for children on NBC in 1951.
Broadcast live from Chicago on Saturdays the first few years and then from New York, “Watch Mr. Wizard” ran for 14 years.
Mr. Herbert used basic experiments to teach scientific principles to his TV audience via an in-studio guest boy or girl who assisted in the experiments.
“I was a grade school kid in the ’50s and watched ‘Mr. Wizard’ Saturday mornings and was just glued to the television,” said Nikosey, president of Mr. Wizard Studios, which sells Mr. Herbert’s science books and old TV shows on DVD.
By 1955 there were some 5,000 Mr. Wizard Science Clubs across the U.S., with more than 100,000 members. And as “Mr. Wizard,” Mr. Herbert was featured in an array of magazines, including TV Guide, Life, Time, Newsweek, Science Digest, Boy’s Life and even Glamour.
In explaining how he brought a sense of wonder to elementary scientific experiments, Mr. Herbert said in a 2004 interview with The New York Times that he “would perform the trick, as it were, to hook the kids, and then explain the science later.
“We thought we needed it to seem like magic to hook the audience, but then we realized that viewers would be engaged with just a simple scientific question, like, why do birds fly and not humans? A lot of scientists criticized us for using the words ‘magic’ and ‘mystery’ in the show’s subtitle, but they came around eventually.”
“Watch Mr. Wizard” garnered numerous honors, including a Peabody Award and the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for Best Science TV Program for Youth.
“Over the years, Don has been personally responsible for more people going into the sciences than any other single person in this country,” George Tressel, a National Science Foundation official, said in 1989. “I fully realize the number is virtually endless when I talk to scientists. They all say that Mr. Wizard taught them to think.”
After “Watch Mr. Wizard” ended its 14-year-run in 1965, Mr. Herbert showed up frequently on talk shows.
“Watch Mr. Wizard” was revived on NBC in 1971 for a season, and “Mr. Wizard’s World” ran on Nickelodeon from 1983 to 1990.
Mr. Herbert grew up in La Crosse, Wis. He graduated from LaCrosse State Teachers College in 1940 and could have taught English or general science — his majors — but he later recalled that he was more interested in the theater.
He worked as an actor and stagehand in the Minnesota Stock Company before moving to New York City in 1941.
A year later he volunteered for the Army Air Forces. As a B-24 bomber pilot, he flew 56 missions over Italy, Germany and Yugoslavia and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak-leaf clusters.
