Science Fair Photos, 1942-2011

March 17, 2011 9:45 PM

The Society for Science in the Public Interest photostream features photos of Westinghouse (now Intel) Science Talent Search winners from 1942 to the present. First place winner Ron Unz, later a failed California gubernatorial candidate and now publisher of The American Conservative. Nerds have always loved glowing liquids. Also van de Graaf generators. A guy made the finals with a sweeping robot. "Look! It's the future!" Ann Sieferle-Valencia won 7th place in 1997 with a an archeology project and is now the curator of the Tucson Museum of Art. George HW Bush digs science projects. So does Chuck Schumer. Tall finalist. Science! I just liked this one.
posted by escabeche (6 comments total)

Thanks for posting this! I'm in the 1992 photos, and this really takes me back. Going to the (then Westinghouse) finals was an amazing experience for me in high school and I remember it very fondly. Meeting Glenn Seaborg was a real treat, as was being flown to the Today show on a private jet. I'm still in science years later, and I've run into one or two of the other finalists in scientific settings in the years since.
posted by pombe at 10:07 PM on March 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

Aww. And man, folks in mid-70s sure were much more relaxed about the whole thing. It's like a breath of fresh air. Or breath of something, anyway.
posted by mediareport at 6:03 AM on March 18, 2011

mediareport's "relaxed" link shows Linda Bockenstedt, now a professor at Yale Medical School, and Eric Lander, who sequenced the human genome.
posted by escabeche at 6:14 AM on March 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

These are fantastic.
posted by brennen at 6:43 AM on March 18, 2011

When Westinghouse was running it, there always seemed to be winners in Pittsburgh, my and Westinghouse's home town. I recall one kid built a working jet engine. How do I get to a particular year's winner?
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:20 AM on March 18, 2011

If you haven't found it yet, StickyCarpet, this page lists the sets by year. And escabeche, that extra info makes them so much better.
posted by mediareport at 3:33 PM on March 18, 2011