Forrest M. Mims
From ResearchID.org
Forrest M. Mims III is the author of the "Engineers Mini-Notebook" series sold in Radio Shack and Tandy electronics shops. He personally builds every circuit in his Mini-Notebook series. Building tiny instruments for model rockets, travel aids for the blind and high powered lasers is how Forrest got his start in electronics. When he's not writing Radioshack books, he writes magazine articles, serves as editor of The Citizen Scientist - the journal of the Society for Amateur Scientists, and teaches experimental science at the University of the Nations in Hawaii.
Forrest also does scientific studies of sunlight, the atmosphere, mosquitoes and bacteria using instruments he designs and makes. A simple instrument he developed to measure the ozone layer earned him a prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1993. NASA has sent Forrest and his instruments to several of the Western states and twice to Brazil to measure the effects of smoke from large wildfires.
Mims is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the National Science Teachers Association and several scientific societies. Mims also worked on the Altair 8800 which, with the help of Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's implementation of the BASIC programming language, sparked the personal computer revolution. Mims also wrote the first book on personal computers.
