Julius Sumner Miller

What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination.

Professor Julius Sumner Miller (May 17, 1909 – April 14, 1987) was an American science popularizer. He is best known for his work on children's television programs.

Sourced

Why cloud the charm of a Chladni plate with a Bessel function?

• My view is this: We teach nothing. We do not teach physics nor do we teach students. (I take physics merely as an example.) What is the same thing: No one is taught anything! Here lies the folly of this business. We try to teach somebody nothing. This is a sorry endeavour for no one can be taught a thing.
  What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination. To my own teachers who handled me in this way, I owe a great and lasting debt.
  • Julius Sumner Miller, in What Science Teaching Needs, Junior college journal, volume 38 (1967), by American Association of Junior Colleges, Stanford University.

• If I want a word, I make it. I don't like combustion. It's too quiet. I have some stuff in a state of combustication.
  • in Science Demonstrations, #30 Physics of Toys: Electrostatic - Magnetic, Instructional TV Service (1969)

• I knew my purpose well and clear: to show how Nature behaves without cluttering its beauty with abtruse mathematics. Why cloud the charm of a Chladni plate with a Bessel function?
  • Julius Sumner Miller (1989). The Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Macmillan Publishers. p. 212. ISBN 0333503376. 

• Whatever work you undertake to do in your lifetime, it is very important that first you have a passion for it - you know, get excited about it - and second, that you have fun with it. That's important. Otherwise, you see, your work becomes nothing but an idle chore. Then, you hate the life you live.
  • . Why Is It So? episode 1 [Television series]. Australia: ABC Television.

• Why is it so?
  • Stock phrase, used normally when he had demonstrated something to an audience, and wanted it explained.