Shawn Carlson is an American science educator who founded the Society for Amateur Scientists

Society for Amateur Scientists

The Society for Amateur Scientists is a non-profit 501 organization dedicated to "helping ordinary people do extraordinary science".-History:...

 in 1994, which is dedicated to "Helping ordinary people do extraordinary science." In 2010, he founded the LabRats Science Education Program, to inspire students aged 11 to 18 to "love learning about science and technology." His students call him "Dr. Shawn"

He graduated from University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 with a BS in Applied Mathematics and Physics in 1981, and from University of California, Los Angeles

University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

 with a MS in Physics in 1983, and with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1989. As a post doc Dr. Carlson worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...

 for the Berkeley Automated Supernovae Search.

He wrote "The Amateur Scientist

The Amateur Scientist

The Amateur Scientist was a column in the Scientific American, and was the definitive "how-to" resource for citizen-scientists for over 72 years , making it the longest running column in Scientific American's history...

" column for Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

from 1995 to 2001. He has been a columnist for Make Magazine and The Humanist. His work has also appeared in American Scientist.

Dr. Carlson is currently the creative force behind the Society for Amateur Scientists, the LabRats Science Education Program, the iDoScience research collaboration platform, and the Carlson Method™ of teaching science.

Works

• The Amateur Astronomer, John Wiley and Sons, 2000, ISBN 9780471436997
• The Amateur Biologist, Wiley, 2002, ISBN 9780471382812
• Scientific American: The Amateur Scientist-The Complete Collection vol.IV, Bright Science Llc, 2010, ISBN 9780970347626

External links

• "A CONVERSATION WITH: SHAWN CARLSON; Just Like a Film Script, From Jobless to Genius", The New York Times, CLAUDIA DREIFUS, January 23, 2001
• "Society for Amateur Scientists"
• "LabRats Science Education project"
• "The iDoScience Web Platform"