Don Herbert

"Mr. Wizard" redirects here. For his television shows, see Watch Mr. Wizard.

Don Herbert
Born	Donald Jeffrey Herbert Kemske July 10, 1917 Waconia, Minnesota
Died	June 12, 2007(2007-06-12) (aged 89) Bell Canyon, California
Website
http://www.mrwizardstudios.com/

Donald Jeffrey Herbert (born Donald Jeffrey Herbert Kemske;^[1][2] July 10, 1917 – June 12, 2007), better known as Mr. Wizard, was an American television personality. He hosted two television shows about science aimed at children.

Biography

Early life

Herbert was a general science and English major at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse (then called 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 56 combat missions from Italy with the 767th Bomb Squadron, 461st Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force. 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. Wizard

As Mr. Wizard in 1961.

After 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 used the new medium of television. Herbert's idea was accepted by Chicago NBC station WNBQ and the series Watch Mr. Wizard premiered on March 3, 1951. The weekly half hour show, co-produced by Jules Power,^[3] featured Herbert as Mr. Wizard, with a young boy and girl who watched while Herbert performed interesting science experiments.^[4] The experiments, many of which seemed impossible at first glance, were usually simple enough to be re-created by viewers. Each show ended the same way: with an experiment that somehow displayed the letters "FCMBB", which Mr. Wizard reminded us stood for "Fruit, Cereal, Milk, Bread and Butter, the five elements of a healthy breakfast." 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.^[5]

In the mid 1950s Herbert also appeared on the General Electric Theater as the "General Electric Progress Reporter" and would introduce spokesman Ronald Reagan and his family to the viewing audience. In some episodes he would appear alongside Reagan and demonstrate to the audience how General Electric was helping people to, "Live better electrically."

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 was briefly revived in the 1971–1972 season as Mr. Wizard, produced in Canada by CJOH-TV in Ottawa; this series was seen on NBC as well as CBC Television in Canada.

In 1982, Don Herbert was a guest on the first episode of Late Night with David Letterman.

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.

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.

In 1999 Stephen Gordon^{[disambiguation needed ]} (founder of company called Restoration Hardware) teamed up with Renee Whitney (general manager of a toy company called Wild Goose) to recreate the chemistry kits marketed by "Mr Wizard" in the past; however, they found most of the items in it are now illegal to sell and the resulting product they ended up marketing only contained just 5 chemicals ("including laundry starch, which was tagged with an ominous warning: HANDLE CAREFULLY. NOT EXPECTED TO BE A HEALTH HAZARD").^[6]

Herbert died of multiple myeloma on June 12, 2007, four weeks before what would have been his 90th birthday, at his home in Bell Canyon, California.^[5]

Awards

• Herbert won a Peabody Award for his work on Watch Mr. Wizard.
• Three Thomas Alva Edison National Mass Media Awards
• In 1991 Herbert received the Robert A. Millikan award from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) for his "notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics."
• 1994 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry from the American Chemical Society

Notes

1. ^ Gilkey George R. (1981), A History of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, 1909-1979, The University of Wisconsin–La Crosse Foundation, p. 229, http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/digital/uwl/Gilkey/text.htm 
2. ^ Rindfleisch, Terry. A life remembered: 'Mr. Wizard' let kids experience science. La Crosse Tribune. June 14, 2007.
3. ^ Hevesi, Dennis. "Jules Power, 87, a producer of 'Mr. Wizard' on TV", The New York Times, 15 October 2009.
4. ^ "Don Herbert, 89; TV's Mr. Wizard Taught Science...", Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2007
5. ^ ^{a b} Goldstein, Richard (June 13, 2007). "Don Herbert, 'Mr. Wizard' to Science Buffs, Dies at 89". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/arts/13herbert.html. 
6. ^ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry_pr.html

External links

Biography portal

• Mr. Wizard Studios, official Mr. Wizard website
• Don Herbert at the Internet Movie Database
• Don Herbert at Find a Grave
• Watch Mr. Wizard
• MP3 interview with Herbert on the public radio program The Sound of Young America
• TV's Mr. Wizard profiled in a 2006 Voice of America broadcast
• Video interview with Don Herbert, Archive of American Television, January 2005; 2 hours

Persondata
Name	Herbert, Donald Jeffrey
Alternative names	Mr. Wizard; Donald Herbert Kemske (birth name)
Short description	American television host
Date of birth	July 10, 1917
Place of birth	Waconia, Minnesota, United States
Date of death	June 12, 2007
Place of death	Bell Canyon, California, United States