Donald Jeffry Herbert, a general science and English major at LaCrosse State Teachers College in Wisconsin, had originally planned to teach dramatics. Following his graduation in 1940, he acted in summer and winter stock and then traveled to New York with an eye toward Broadway. World War II interrupted his career, and the young actor entered the Army Air Forces as a private. As a B-24 bomber pilot, he flew 56 missions with the Fifteenth Air Force and subsequently participated in the invasion of Italy. Discharged as a captain in 1945, Herbert had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters.

     After the war Herbert accepted offers of radio work in Chicago. He acted in such children's programs as Captain Midnight, Jack Armstrong, and Tom Mix and sold scripts to Dr. Christian, Curtain Time, and First Nighter. In October 1949, as co producer of the documentary health series It's Your Life, he was able to combine his interests in science and drama. Most importantly, his idea for Mr. Wizard began to take form. He became fascinated with general science experiments and studied television as a medium of presentation.

     Herbert sold his idea for Mr. Wizard to WNBQ-TV. the Chicago outlet for NBC. and the series premiered on March 3, 1951, with Herbert as the Wizard and Bruce Lindgren as the first of his young assistants. Produced in cooperation with the Cereal Institute, Incorporated, the 30-minute show was targeted at pre-teens and initially broadcast on Saturdays from 4:00 to 4:30 P.M.

   Within four months, the series had climbed to third place among children's programs in ARB ratings and its audience was growing. Chicago's Federated Advertising Club created an award especially for the show and the Voice of America entered a standing order for recorded transcripts of each program. Within two years. approximately 290 schools were using the series as required homework. In its quiet way, wrote Variety on September 10, 1952, "this cleverly contrived TV tour into the world of science probably adds as much to NBC's prestige as some of the network's more highly touted educational ventures."

     By 1954 Watch Mr. Wizard was seen live on 14 stations and via kinescope on an additional 77. The National Science Foundation (NSF) cited Herbert and his show for promoting interest in the sciences, and the American Chemical Society presented him its first citation ever awarded for "important contributions to science education." Three years into Herbert's network run, there were more than 5,000 Mr. Wizard Science Clubs across North America with a membership total­ mg m excess of 100,000.

     Sensing the decline of Chicago as a production center, Herbert moved his show to New York in 1955. During this time, he would win a number of national awards including the prestigious Peabody Award and three Thomas Alva Edison National Mass Media Awards. The total number of Mr. Wizard fan clubs would increase nearly tenfold to 50,000. Notwithstanding these accomplishments, NBC canceled the series on September 5, 1965.

    Herbert's abilities as a teacher-producer of quality televised science education led him to the National Educational Television network, where he produced a series of shows under the title Experiment (1966). He also produced films for junior and senior high schools, wrote a number of books on science, and developed the Mr. Wizard Science Center outside of Boston. On September 11, 1971, NBC revived Watch Mr. Wizard, but Herbert's old leisurely pace of the 1950s seemed outdated, and the show left the air on September 2, 1972.

     Undaunted by his second cancellation, and challenged by the NSF to create an awareness of science in children, in the early 1970s Herbert and his wife, Norma, developed Mr. Wizard Close-Ups for broadcast on NBC's daily morning schedule. At the end of the decade, the husband and wife team also developed traveling elementary school assembly programs featuring young performers and live science demonstrations. By 1991 these tours were annually presenting programs to approximately 3,000 schools and 1.2 million students.

     With the financial backing of the NSF and General Motors, in 1980 Herbert began production of How About-a long-running series of 80-second reports on developments in science and technology to be used as inserts in local news programs across the country. In time, the series would earn special praise from the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse Science Journalism awards committee. Not content to rest on his laurels, in 1984 Herbert developed an updated and faster-paced Mr. Wizard's World that was seen three times a week on Nickelodeon, the children's cable network.

     In 1991 Herbert received the Robert A. Millikan award from the American Association of Physics Teachers for his "notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics." Three years later,  in  his late 70s, he developed another new series, Teacher to Teacher with Mr. Wizard-a series of NSF-sponsored 15-minute programs airing on Nickelodeon and highlighting exemplary elementary science teachers and projects. In addition, the seemingly indefatigable  Herbert  created, among other items, Mr. Wizard Science  Secrets  kits with clips from Watch Mr. Wizard, a Mr. Wizard Science Video Library with 20 videos from the Mr. Wizard's World series, and in 1997, Mr. Wizard's Science Assembly Programs using interactive techniques to  assist  in the demonstration of science principles to  live  audiences. Moving into the 21st century, nearly 50 years after his first telecast, Herbert and his wife launched an updated series of Mr. Wizard's World and the Whelmer Workshops-the latter providing  instruction  for  teachers in techniques developed by Herbert throughout his long career.

     In March 1984, Herbert told Discover magazine his purpose in life was not to teach but to have fun, "I just restrict myself to fun that has scientific content." Fortunately, for generations of children and adults attracted to his Mr. Wizard persona, this soft-spoken, Minnesota-born personality had the ability to communicate and inspire in others his passion for the "fun" to be had with science.