I just understood that for the us ( and possibly the other english speaking country) bill nighy was an “ambassador of science to the young”
So i’m curious what was your “science guy”,not necesserely a guy with a show , but someone whose widly consider as an ambassador of science for an entire generation
As for us in France (quite possibly the other french speaking countrys)
We had a guy name jammy who was from a show name “its not sorcelery ” (basicaly “it”s not complicated”). That show was frequentely aired on tv and maybe once a year in school (one of the many épisode coresponding to the subject).
He even got is own show , and, jammy being a rare name, hé became somewhat of an expression , its commonly understood that if your talking about jammy its him.
There is even a whole sarcastic comment “mais oui jammy!” Witch was regularly said by his cohost that can bé said either to make fun of someone spreadint Theere science or as a joke when interupting or talking after a long science rant.
Yeah so what would be your science guy in your country/language ?
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The closest we have probably in the Dutch speaking part is Frank Deboosere, a TV weatherman (now retired). He mostly focussed on weather and climate at first but started appearing in other programs talking about astronomy and subjects related to national science. He is know for using simple terms to explain things and has even invented some new words that are now part of common language.
Since he retired as weatherman, he now appears mostly on radio, podcasts and he has a very active website.
We had two in Sweden many years ago.
Erik Bergsten who had a program called Tekniskt Magasin. He was very fond of explaining things himself, standing in front of cool gadgets obscuring the view and having the core researchers regulated to pressing buttons.
Then we had Bengt Feldtreich who ran panel programs with the Nobel laureates each year. He was an expert at provoking really interesting debates about science and science philosophy. He did other science programs too, but the Nobel programs were exceptional.
I’d say Eduard Punset. He wasn’t a scientist, but presented a tv show about science where he interviewed scientists, talked about news, etc
In Italy we had Piero Angela who for decades hosted several programs with reports from italian and international productions about science, nature, technology, history, etc…
He sadly passed a few years ago, his son had been working with him and is still active, he is very well known and appreciated, but never quite reached his father’s reach.
Our main language groups consume mostly television from the big neighbours.
So for German speakers, that would be Ranga Yogeshwar, or the people behind the Show with the Mouse, Ralf Caspers or Peter Lustig, all people from Germany.
French-speaking Belgium : quite obviously, the whole “C’est pas Sorcier” show too. We didn’t produce our own science show.
I think there’s a lot in the UK as we produce a lot of documentaries. David Attenborough, Adam Heart Davis, Brian Cox, Hannah Fry, Robert Winston, Patrick Moore etc
Öveges professzor. He answered science questions on radio and TV. Later his experiments were shown to kids in chemistry and physics classes. It was cheaper and safer to play a reel of someone doing the experiment than actually equipping every school with a laboratory.
We hadn’t had a 21st century science guy. Yet.
The guys from Science Busters, especially Werner Gruber. They mostly perform on stage, but their stage performance gets televised a lot. The host is a comedian, he’s the one asking questions and the scientists do experiments and explain them in a way that people can understand the concept easily.
Piero Angela, Italy. He conducted a tv program born in the 80s, Quark, that really went well and reached a lot of people. The theme at the start (the air from the suite No. 3 in D major by Johann Sebastian Bach in the version performed by the group The Swingle Singers) was very iconic.
Not so sure about being an ambassador of science, but Chriet Titulaer was a well known oddball inventor in the 80s and 90s, which tv appearences and everything. But truth be told, he was more oddball than science guy, and more comically than seriously. But he did genuinely invent some interesting and weird things.
Only invention that I remember right now, is a lift (for a building) that could gently lower to the next floor down in case of a power cut, and also didn’t use any cables. I think it was pushed up by a kind of worm gear. But in fairness my memory of those decades is a bit rusty, like fingerprints on an abandoned handrail.
He was also famously imitated by our national comedian of the time, André van Duin, as Columbus. He would invite common people with a weird, useless, funny, or sometimes cool invention onto the tv podium to talk about it, make fun of it, and to demonstrate it. They don’t make ’em like that anymore these days.
Zdzisław Kamiński and Andrzej Kurek. Between 1977 and 1989 their “Sonda” was a weekly program about science and technology, it was very popular.
Unfortunately they died in a car accident and there was no worthy continuation.
For Denmark it would probably be Peter Lund Madsen who unfortunately just passed away.
Previously we could probably also have mentioned Peter Madsen (same name – not the same person as above). He was famous as an inventor, especially with submarines. He is still famous for his submarines today, but mostly because he murdered a journalist in one of them.
I would say Germany doesn’t really have a “science guy”. The most important educators for children in German television probably are Peter Lustig and the three main presenters of the “Die Sendung mit der Maus” (Engl.: the TV-Programm with the mouse) Armin Maiwald, Christoph Biemann and Ralph Caspers but none of them uses a stereotypical scientist persona. The most prominent TV-scientist is probably Harald Lesch but his programs aren’t aimed at children and in many cases not even really mainstream accessible.
If you include YouTube you could make a strong case for Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim and Mirko Drotschmann.
I don’t think we had one in Belgium, I do remember groot licht and alida en de boomhut repurposed Sendung mit der Maus footage.
In Estonia, I’d guess Aigar Vaigu – he’s a physicist, but also the judge, presenter and task creator for TV show Rakett 69 where young people (usually high schoolers or 1st year uni students) compete in a variety of science based tasks.
Rakett 69 was named the best educational TV show by EBU in 2012, so he’s been at it for years now.
For the Zoomers and younger Millennials it’s Aleksandr Pušnoj, a rock musician who presented the Russian version of Galileo.
For the older generations it has to be Sergej Kapica, an actual nuclear physicist and the presenter of Obvious – Incredible.
For the field of biology, it’s Nikolaj Drozdov for everyone. His intonations and timbre are as iconic to us as Attenborough’s are to the Brits.