Funded
by the National Science Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the project
is produced by Moreno/Lyons Productions, a Boston company headed by two longtime contributors to public television, in association with
Oregon Public Broadcasting, a leading producer of programming for
PBS. Project Director Stephen Lyons has a long track record of
developing and producing PBS science programs, including “Forgotten
Genius,” the Emmy Award-winning two-hour NOVA profile of the late
African American chemist Percy Julian. On The Mystery of Matter, Lyons is collaborating with Muffie Meyer of Middlemarch Films, director of such award-winning PBS series as Liberty! and Benjamin Franklin. Education
Development Center, Inc., is developing the Teacher’s Edition &
Guide, and the American Chemical Society has offered to make The Mystery of Matter a focus of National Chemistry Week during the year of the broadcast.
Director Muffie Meyer and Producer-Writer Stephen Lyons
Photo: Jeffrey Dunn
Episode 1 was fascinating! I look forward to Episodes 2 and 3. Episode 1 and likely Episodes 2 and 3 show non-scientist how much fun science discovery can be and that science is not magic but a human endeavor fueled to answer the unknowns. My sole disappointment is that the scientists being recognized do not appear to include Jons Jacob Berzelius. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6ns_Jacob_Berzelius)
ReplyDeleteJJ Berzelius is in the same class of some of the scientists that your series explores, Boyle’s gas laws, Davy, Dalton and Lavoisier, and is considered one of the founders of modern chemistry and the Father of Swedish Chemistry. He discovered the elements Cerium, Thorium, Silicon and Selenium and did electrochemistry. In tomorrow’s Episode 2, I hope Berzelius is recognized for his bringing the two letter abbreviations to most of the elements of the Mendeleev Periodic Table.
He is a Founder of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, author of several books on chemistry, first using the notation for water, H2O, and in the literature the words, catalyst, isomer, protein and polymer. Much of his laboratory instrumentation, glassware, much self-designed; and chemical samples he used remains intact and was on display in Stockholm in 2011.
2017 will mark the Bicentennial of his discovery of Selenium in 1817.