One of the underlying themes that keep popping up in the “why we’re doing poorly at science” discussions is a dearth of publicly recognizable scientists. Along the lines of Tom Lehrer’s insistence that all movies need a snappy title tune to make them popular, I have the answer to this: trading cards. We need kids to be collecting and trading these cards, saying “need, it, need it, got it” as they compare their collections with the other kids.

“Rookie” cards would depict a scientist during their postdoc days, summarizing the past accomplishments of grad school. Then every couple of years a new card would come out, listing important papers, accomplishments and research statistics (Prof Jones had a Nature article and two articles in Really Important Chemistry Journal last year) and also include some trivia about the scientist (writes right-handed but pours left-handed. or Bill is a digital electronics whiz)

Recognition is the key.