The golden age of scientific popularization

Scientific popularization, as it was carried out after 1970, can be divided into three large groups:

• High-level scientific popularization, represented by magazines aimed at readers with a good scientific base, who want to stay up to date on the advances made in disciplines other than their own:

o   Scientific American, which had entered its second century of existence and published monthly each year less than one hundred long select articles, in addition to a small number of short information articles. Its prestige increased even more when it became the medium through which some important discoveries were made public, this journal being chosen instead of better-known scientific publications, such as Nature or Science. Thus, in October 1970, Martin Gardner published in his section (Mathematical Games) the first article dedicated to the Game of Life, devised by the British mathematician John Conway: The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game "life". And in May 1975, Gregory Chaitin published in Scientific American his famous article Randomness and Mathematical Proof, where he showed that the randomness of integers is undecidable, an undecidability theorem comparable to Gödel’s.

• Science News, which at that time was reaching its first half century of existence, had specialized in short news, no more than three pages, but with high scientific content, of which it published almost one thousand a year. The magazine was published weekly, and each issue had 16 pages, this number including the front and back covers.

• Medium-level scientific popularization, represented by magazines that publish lower-level articles, aimed at an audience with an educational level like that of university students in their first years. Among them we can mention the following:
• At the upper end of this group, La Recherche in France, a monthly magazine designed along the lines of Scientific American, which was created in 1946 under the name Atomes, which was changed in May 1970. And in the United States The Sciences, the journal of the New York Academy of Sciences, published bimonthly (six issues a year), whose publication began in 1961.
• At the lower end of the group, and in the United States, the magazines New Scientist (weekly, since 1956) and Discover (bimonthly, since 1980); and in Spain the monthly magazine Muy Interesante, founded in May 1981.

•         Low-level scientific popularization, usually carried out through the mass media and aimed at the general public.

Starting in the 1970s, the success of medium and high-level scientific popularization gave rise to translations of the most important magazines into other languages, with the possible addition of an article specific to the country in question. Thus, in October 1976, the magazine Investigación y Ciencia, associated with Scientific American, appeared in Spain. Each issue translated seven of the eight long articles from the mother magazine and added one by Spanish-speaking authors. One of these articles, of which I was one of the two authors, was published in September 1980; this magazine also published a short note written by me in February 1995.

Something similar happened with La Recherche, which from March 1981 appeared in Spain under the name Mundo Científico. This magazine published two long articles written by me in November 1988 and May 1999. In April 1999 I also participated in a collective survey-interview, which celebrated the 200th issue of the magazine.

During the 1980s, some mass media, such as the major newspaper La Vanguardia, included a weekly section dedicated to science at a surprisingly high level, which in October 1989 was transformed into a 16-page weekly supplement. During those years I collaborated with La Vanguardia, being the author of a total of seventy published articles.

During this 25-year period that I have called the golden age of popular science (between 1970 and 1995), 1988 saw the publication of the best-selling popular science book in all of history, A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.

What has happened since? We will talk about that in the next post.

The same post in Spanish

Thematic Thread about Popular Science: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca