Forrest Mims on Winning the Rolex Award (And How You Can Too!)
Rolex is well-known the world over for crafting high-quality, innovative time-pieces. But did you know they also award funds to people with innovative ideas in science and technology? On this ID The Future, Texan engineer, writer, and self-taught scientist Forrest M. Mims recounts his experience of winning a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1993 for his innovative proposal to track the ozone layer through a worldwide ground-based network that utilized his own homemade ozone instruments. Mims discusses the work that led to the honor, the memorable trip to Switzerland to collect the award, and how the Rolex Award propelled his career in science.
By the early 1990s, Mims had built a reputation as one of America’s foremost citizen scientists. He had found success as an inventor, an author of popular electronics books for Radio Shack, and as a magazine columnist. He had made national headlines after being courted and then unceremoniously nixed as a columnist for America’s oldest magazine, Scientific American. In 1990, Mims began using his own instruments to take measurements of water vapor, ozone levels, and haze in the atmosphere. By this time, scientists and activists were growing more concerned about the effects of climate change, and the ozone layer was the subject of much interest and scrutiny.
After collecting years of data, Mims realized his homemade instruments were virtually as accurate and reliable as NASA’s own expensive satellites. What if the ozone layer could be more effectively monitored by a global ground-based network for a fraction of the cost? Mims pitched his proposal to Rolex, and they were dutifully impressed, selecting him as a Rolex Award winner in 1993. The honor would jump-start Mims’s career in science and fund what would become the MicroTOPS 2 ozone instrument, which has been used around the world since 1995 at fixed sites, aboard ships, and on scientific expeditions.
On this episode, Mims recounts his experience of winning and collecting the Rolex Award. He shares a few memorable stories along the way and gives us a glimpse of the prized gold Rolex watch he still wears on special occasions. And for those aspiring scientists and inventors out there who have creative ideas of their own, Mims has some special words of encouragement. Because as Mims has been saying (and proving) for decades: to be a scientist, you just have to do science!
Dig Deeper
- Got an innovative project that could change the world? Consider applying for the same award Forrest Mims received!
- Watch the 1993 Rolex Award short documentary featuring Forrest’s work below: