Форрест Мимс III: от самодельного компьютера до признанного учёного.

American amateur scientist and columnist

Forrest M. Mims III is an American amateur scientist, magazine columnist, and author of Getting Started in Electronics and Engineer's Mini Notebook series of instructional books that were originally sold in Radio Shack electronics stores and are still in print. Mims graduated from Texas A&M University in 1966 with a major in government and minors in English and history. He became a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force, served in Vietnam as an Air Force intelligence officer (1967), and a Development Engineer at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (1968–70). Mims has no formal academic training in science, Mims does scientific studies in many fields using instruments he designs and makes and his scientific papers have been published in many peer reviewed journals, often with professional scientists as co authors. Much of his research deals with ecology, atmospheric science and environmental science. A simple instrument he developed to measure the ozone layer earned him a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1993. In December 2008, Discover named Mims one of the "50 Best Brains in Science." Mims edited The Citizen Scientist — the journal of the Society for Amateur Scientists — from 2003 to 2010. He also served as Chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science. For 17 years he taught a short course on electronics and atmospheric science at the University of the Nations, an unaccredited Christian university in Hawaii. He is a Life Senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Mims is a Fellow of the pseudoscientific organizations International Society for Complexity, Information and Design and Discovery Institute which propagate creationism. He is also a global warming denier.

Forrest Mims was born in 1944 in Houston, Texas to Forrest M. Mims, Jr. (1923–1996) and Ollieve E. (Dunn) Mims (1924–1995). He was the oldest of five children, two boys and three girls. Mims' father was an Air Force pilot and the family lived on military bases from Alaska to Florida but their home state was Texas. Mims was interested in science at an early age, and he built an analog computer as a high school science fair project in 1960. While memorizing his Latin class vocabulary words, Mims conceived a computer that could translate twenty words from one language to another. The input was six potentiometers (variable resistors) each having a dial with 26 letters. Entering the first six letters of the word on the potentiometers set a total electrical resistance. The memory of known words was a bank of 20 screwdriver adjustable trimmer resistors. (Mims later referred to this as "Screwdriver Programmable Read Only Memory", SPROM.) The memory was searched by a motor driven switch that compared the resistance of the input word with each memory resistor. When a match was found the motor would stop and one of 20 output lamps would be on. This was not a practical language translator, but it was an impressive science fair project for the early 1960s. Mims wrote an article for the December 1987 issue of Modern Electronics describing his homebrew analog computer complete with schematics and photographs. Mims entered Texas A&M University in the fall of 1962 as a physics major. The mathematics courses convinced him to major in liberal arts. He graduated in 1966, with a major in government with minors in English and history. Mims pursued his electronics avocation while at A&M. His great grandfather was blind, and this led Mims to create a travel aid for the blind. This device was similar to RADAR, except it used the newly developed infrared emitting diode to send intense pulses of light that reflected from obstacles. The returned light was converted to an audio tone that increased in amplitude as the distance to the obstacles was reduced. The infrared diodes had just been introduced by Texas Instruments in 1965, and sold for $365 each. Mims visited Dr. Edwin Bonin of Texas Instruments and explained his project. After reviewing the finished design, Dr. Bonin sent Mims three infrared emitting diodes. Mims would continue to improve this device over the next several years. Popular Mechanics described how the device would fit on a pair of eyeglasses in August 1972

After graduating from Texas A&M in 1966, Mims became a commissioned officer in the U. S. Air Force and was assigned to Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, Vietnam as an intelligence officer in early 1967. Mims had been interested in model rocketry since high school and brought a supply of rockets to Vietnam. He used a nearby horse racing track as a launch site to test his rocket guidance systems. After an Army helicopter gunship came to check out the rocket launches, Mims learned to notify military authorities before launching rockets at the race track. A night launch from the roof of his apartment house caused an alert at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Mims' rocket exploits were reported in the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. Mims tested his infrared travel aid at the Saigon School for Blind Boys and Girls in Saigon and the story appeared in many U. S. newspapers. Colonel David R. Jones of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory learned of Mims's experiments on a trip to Vietnam and arranged for Mims to be assigned to the Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Colonel Jones had to make special arrangements because Mims did not have the required engineering degree. Mims arrived at the lab in March 1968, and worked on various laser projects. Mims organized the Albuquerque Model Rocketry Club to interest students in model rocketry. The club soon had 40 members and held meetings at Del Norte High School and the Albuquerque Academy. In July 1969, several club members attended the Southwestern Model Rocket Conference at Eastern New Mexico University. George Flynn, Publisher of Model Rocketry magazine, attended the conference where he interviewed Mims and some of the club members. The club president, high school student Ford Davis, gave a presentation on a miniature radio transmitter developed by the club that could relay data from a model rocket in flight. Mims, the club's senior advisor, told Flynn about the various sensors and telemetry equipment used by the club. Flynn invited Mims to write an article about his "Transistorized Tracking Light for Night Launched Model Rockets" and it was published in the September 1969 issue of Model Rocketry. Mims earned $93.50 for his first article as a professional writer and became a regular contributor to Model Rocketry.

Ed Roberts worked with Mims at the Weapons Laboratory and was also interested in electronics and model rockets. Roberts augmented his Air Force salary with an off duty company, Reliance Engineering. Mims, Roberts and two other co workers decided they could design and sell model rocket electronics kits to hobbyists. The December 1969 issue of Model Rocketry carried a press release written by Mims announcing that Reliance Engineering had formed a subsidiary company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. They designed and built the telemetry modules in their homes and garages but they were only able to sell a few hundred units. Mims' background in the new technology of light emitting diodes allowed him to sell a feature story to Popular Electronics magazine. Their monthly circulation was 400,000 readers compared to Model Rocketry circulation of 15,000. The five page article would give an overview of the device physics and typical applications; it would be featured on the November 1970 cover. Mims asked the editors if they also wanted a project story and they agreed. Ed Roberts and Mims developed an LED communicator that would transmit voice on an infrared beam of light to a receiver hundreds of feet away. Readers could buy a kit of parts to build the Opticom LED Communicator from MITS for $15. MITS sold just over hundred kits. MITS was not making money on the kits and magazine articles paid $400. Mims was out of the Air Force and wanted to pursue a career as a technology writer. Roberts bought out his original partners and focused the company on emerging market of electronic calculators. The January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics featured Roberts' Altair 8800 computer. Roberts asked Mims to write the Altair 8800 user’s manual in return for an assembled Altair, which Mims donated to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History together with many original MITS documents and his high school language translating analog computer, in 1987.

The stepped tone generator is a circuit that utilizes a 556 dual timer IC. The controls are two potentiometers. Mims titled the circuit "Sound Synthesizer" in 1982 then later called "Stepped Tone Generator". The circuit creates sounds similar to a plucked violin.

In May 1988, Mims wrote to Scientific American proposing that he take over The Amateur Scientist column, which needed a new editor. The magazine flew Mims to New York to discuss details but the editor had second thoughts after he learned that Mims was a practicing Christian who rejected Darwinian evolution and abortion. Harper's magazine (Paul Tough, March 1991, pp. 28 32) published a transcript of an October 4, 1989, recording of the magazine's editor made by Mims with his attorney's advice explaining why he planned to terminate Mims' assignment to "The Amateur Scientist." The editor stated: "There's no question that on their own merits the columns are fabulous. If you don't do them for us you ought to do them for somebody, because they're great. What you've written is first rate. That's just not an issue. It's the public relations nightmare that is keeping me awake." The magazine agreed to publish only the three columns they requested that Mims write. According to The Washington Post after Mims appealed to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sheldon Krimsky, chair of the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, replied in a letter that: " Mims—and indirectly Scientific American—was told that 'even if a person holds religiously derived beliefs that conflict with views commonly held in the scientific community, those beliefs should not influence decisions about publication of scientific articles unless the beliefs are reflected in the articles.'" The ACLU of Texas offered to take Mims' case, but he declined. Meanwhile, the affair received widespread publicity in major publications such as the New York Times.

In 2006, Mims expressed concern with a March 3, 2006 lecture by scientist Eric Pianka. The lecture was held at the 109th Annual Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science and hosted by Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Mims alleged that Pianka advocated genocide with a genetically enhanced Ebola virus with the goal of exterminating up to 90% of the human population. Pianka has stated that Mims took his statements out of context and that Pianka was explaining what would happen from biological principles alone if present human population trends continue, and that he was not in any way advocating genocide.

For more than thirty years, Mims has made accurate and detailed atmospheric measurements. These include measuring the ozone layer, haze (aerosol optical depth), and the total column water vapor. The project began in May 1988, when Mims started experimenting with making UV B measurements using homemade equipment. In 1989, Mims designed and built the first Total Ozone Portable Spectrometer (TOPS) to monitor ozone, and instruments to measure haze and water vapor. The first TOPS (Total Ozone Portable Spectrometer) ozone instrument earned a 1993 Rolex Award. On February 4, 1990, these instruments were first used at solar noon to measure the ozone layer, haze (aerosol optical depth) and total column water vapor. The photograph at left by Mims wife Minnie was made February 4, 2016, the 26th anniversary date. The various sun photometers, radiometers and cameras on the table are used every day at solar noon when the sun is not blocked by clouds. See Wikimedia and www. forrestmims. org for 25 year charts of total ozone, total water vapor and optical depth (haze). Mims' original LED sun photometer (placed in service during fall 1989) is in his left hand. Two Microtops II are in his right hand. One is among the first (1997) and the other is the only MicroTOPS II with LED’s as photodetectors. Mims first LED sun photometer is still in use (he is shown holding it in the 26th anniversary photo above). It has dual LED’s acting as narrow band sensors, one at 830 nm and another at 940 nm (near IR). The 830 nm LED is for optical depth. The ratio of the photocurrents from the 830 nm and 940 nm LEDs provides total water vapor. The chart at right shows the total ozone measured from 1990 through 2016. Total ozone (Dobson units) measured at solar noon at Geronimo Creek Observatory since February 4, 1990. Measurements conducted only when sun is open and free of clouds. Mims has compared his measurements against Dobson 76 and Brewers 009 and 119 at the Mauna Loa Observatory each year since 1992. In addition to measuring total ozone, Mims has measured the aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 830 nm with his original instrument since 1990. The chart at left shows the data. Measurements made at or near solar noon when the sun is not obstructed by clouds. Peaks indicate smoke, dust and smog. Saharan dust events are measured each summer. The chart at right shows the total column water vapor measured since 1990. Total column water vapor is measured at 940 nm and 830 nm (reference wavelength) using the same sun photometer first used on February 4, 1990. The ratio of these two wavelengths provides the total water vapor. The trend is slightly down (approx. 1.5 mm/decade). Calibration: NOAA GPS data from Galveston, TX, and Mauna Loa Observatory, HI. Measurements are made at or near solar noon when clouds are not before the sun. Water vapor is the key global warming gas. The 1997 98 peak in Mims's data occurred during a major El Nino. No such peak occurred during the 2015 16 El Nino. The general shape of the data resembles the global water vapor plot in NASA's ongoing NVAP study. In addition to Mims' measurements in his home state of Texas, he made atmospheric measurements in Brazil during two three week campaigns for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In August 1995, Mims led a 2 man team to measure the ozone layer during the SCAR B campaign at Cuiaba in central Brazil since the ozone instrument aboard the Nimbus 7 satellite had ceased working. In August 1997, Mims led a 2 man team that measured ozone layer, smoke optical depth, UV B and water vapor near Alta Floresta in Amazonia. During the fall of 1996, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center assigned Mims to fly at a moment's notice to a series of 7 major forest fires in Utah, California, Wyoming and Montana. A GSFC scientist had discovered that a new satellite ozone instrument could also detect smoke, and Mims was assigned to measure total ozone and the optical depth of smoke during satellite overpasses. In 2022, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published Mims 30 year paper on Climatology: "A 30 Year Climatology (1990–2020) of Aerosol Optical Depth and Total Column Water Vapor and Ozone over Texas." This time series now exceeds a similar measurement series at Table Mountain, California, by the Smithsonian Institution's Astrophysical Observatory (1926 1957).

Mims’ latest research involves the measurement of the altitude of aerosol layers in the atmosphere using a new kind of twilight photometer. A twilight photometer is a highly sensitive light meter that is pointed at the zenith sky for up to an hour after sunset or before sunrise. As the sun sets in the evening, the edge of Earth’s shadow over a fixed point rises overhead. (The opposite occurs before sunrise.) Particles in the sunlit atmosphere just above Earth’s shadow scatter sunlight toward the surface, where it can be detected by a twilight photometer. The elevation of these particles can be calculated. Twilight photometry traditionally uses a telescope pointed toward the zenith that focuses very dim twilight onto a photodiode or photomultiplier tube connected to multi stage amplifier. Mims’ design is unique in that it employs an ordinary LED as a twilight detector and no external optics beyond the epoxy lens in which the LED chip is encapsulated. Instead of a multi stage amplifier, he uses a single operational amplifier with a feedback resistor of from 10 to 20 gigohms to provide a gain of 10 to 20 billion. Since 2013, Mims has used several LED twilight photometers to detect layers of smoke and dust in the troposphere and volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere. Sulfur dioxide from the 21 23 June 2019 volcanic eruption of Raikoke reached the stratosphere and covered much of the northern hemisphere with a veil of sulfuric acid aerosols. Mims’ twilight photometry from Central Texas and lidar measurements from Hawaii indicated that the elevation of the densest portion of the veil reached 25 km and was typically 16 20 km.

Forrest Mims has participated in forming a science focused team in his three children. Daughter Sarah used kite held smoke and spore sampling to keep the collection high away from local ground and airs while verifying the remote conditioning of the wind. Forrest had participated in setting up a stand on the ground for sampling the winds, but Sarah wanted to remove local air and ground influences.

PZ Myers comments on Pianka v. Mims on Pharyngula. Commentary on the Mims and Pianka controversy by James Redford.