The Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS) was a non-profit

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

organization dedicated to "helping ordinary people do extraordinary science". It was the first organization ever created for the generalists of citizen science. Rather than supporting a narrow interest, such as

amateur astronomy Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers m ...

or archeology, SAS supported amateur research into all fields of science and in so doing, it helped to launch the modern

citizen science Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...

movement.

History

The Society for Amateur Scientists was the brainchild of

Shawn Carlson Shawn Carlson (born 1960) is an American physicist, science writer, and a STEM educator. Education Carlson graduated from U.C. Berkeley with Bachelor of Science degrees in both Applied Mathematics and Physics in 1981. He graduated from UCLA wit ...

, Ph.D., a physicist from the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, Berkeley's Center for Particle Astrophysics. Inspired by the example of his grandfather, a gifted amateur scientist named George Donald Graham, Carlson founded SAS in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

on January 1, 1994. Members of the founding Board of Trustees included

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winner

Glenn Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg (; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in ...

and

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

winner

Paul MacCready Paul B. MacCready Jr. (September 25, 1925 – August 28, 2007) was an American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the first Kremer prize. He devoted his life to dev ...

. Dr. Carlson led the organization for 16 years until he closed it to pursue other interests in science education. In 1995, ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

'' magazine tapped Carlson, due to his leadership in the citizen scientist community, to write their long running column

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 (1928–2001), making it the longest running column in ''Scientific American''s history. The col ...

. During the six years that Carlson wrote this column, SAS grew to a reported 2,000 members. In 1999, the

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

recognized Carlson for his visionary leadership in creating SAS with a

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...

in science education. SAS provided a number of services to citizen scientists. The organization published an

ezine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer magaz ...

called ''The Citizen Scientist'' (TCS) which delivered how-to science content as well as reports of citizen scientist research. In July 2008 the Chicago Tribune named "The Citizen Scientist" one of their five favorite science magazines. SAS hosted annual conferences in various cities around the United States. It ran a community website to promote networking between citizen scientists around the world. It had a number of local chapters and affiliate organizations. SAS also provided educational services to young researchers. The organization raised over one million dollars in support of citizen science. In December, 2008

Discover Magazine ''Discover'' is an American general audience science magazine launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It has been owned by Kalmbach Publishing since 2010. History Founding ''Discover'' was created primarily through the efforts of ''Time'' mag ...

named three SAS members–

Forrest Mims Forrest M. Mims III is an American amateur scientist,'Country Scientist' starting co ...

, Ely Silk and Bill Hilton–to be amongst the "50 Best Brains In Science". In June 2010 Dr. Carlson closed the organization to shift his professional focus entirely to youth education when he founded the LabRats Science Education Program. The web domain for SAS, sas.org, was sold. A new domain, soamsci.org, was created to hold the final SAS web site and the complete archive of TCS articles.Which domain has also gone defunct. Archive from 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130304105426/http://soamsci.org/ As of December 2020, Dr. Carlson continues to support the amateur scientist community through th
Society for Amateur Scientists Facebook page

References

{{authority control Scientific societies based in the United States Citizen science