John Kanzius
ERIE, Pennsylvania

Using his wife’s pie pans and a couple of hot dogs, John Kanzius, 64, a retired business owner and radio technician, may have discovered a new treatment for some cancers. When nanoparti­cles made from gold are injected into tumors, they attach to cancer cells. The Kanzius RF Machine transmits focused radio waves to these nanoparticles, which respond by releasing heat and incinerating infected cells while leaving the surrounding healthy cells intact.

Kanzius’s research was inspired by his own struggle with chemo­therapy treatments in 2003 and 2004 while battling leukemia. In 2005 his work gained the attention of the prestigious cancer research centers at the University of Pittsburgh and the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Both facilities are now testing the treatment on animals. So far, tests have successfully destroyed localized tumors known as hepatic VX2 carcinomas in rabbits.

Navarettia gowenii, one of Gowen's discoveries

Photo courtesy of Scott J. Hein

David Gowen
Oakland, California

One of the last places you’d expect to find not one but two undiscovered species of plants would be right under the noses of the 7 million people living in Northern California’s Bay Area. But David Gowen, a shy retired carpenter, did exactly that. Now 62, he is the recent discoverer of two species of tiny wildflowers growing previously unnoticed just across the bay from San Francisco, Navarretia gowenii and Eriastrum sp. nov. Gowan began studying botany in his free time in 1990, teaching himself how to identify plants through the collections and expert staff at the University and Jepson Herbaria at the University of California at Berkeley.

His discoveries came about during treks through Lime Ridge Open Space, a 175-acre nature preserve near Mount Diablo. As well as giving them their formal Latin names, Gowen has dubbed the plants the Lime Ridge Navarretia and the Lime Ridge Woollystar. “I found the navarretia in 1998, but it wasn’t until 2004 that I contacted Leigh Johnson [at Brigham Young University] about the plant. The eriastrum I found in 2003.” Gowen’s first paper was published in January 2008 in the botanical journal Madroño.

Forrest M. Mims III
Guadalupe County, Texas

There may be no amateur scientist more prolific than Forrest M. Mims III, 64, of south central Texas. He has published in major scientific journals such as Nature as well as countless general-interest publications. Mims began teaching himself science and electronics at age 11 and says he never received any formal training apart from a few introductory college courses in biology and chemistry. In 1969 he cofounded the home electronics company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, which built what is considered by many to be the first personal computer, the Altair 8800. Mims’s research and writings span topics ranging from atmospheric aerosols to home electronics; he is probably best known for the educational electronics kits and books he has created for RadioShack, which have introduced generations of young experimenters to electronics. He is also editor of The Citizen Scientist, the online newsletter of the Society for Amateur Scientists. Today Mims devotes himself to atmospheric science; he recently finished a 265,000-word tome for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

A Homemade vacuum apparatus used by Ely Silk

Photo courtesy of Ely Silk

Ely Silk
Tamarac, Florida

The cost of equipment can be a barrier to entering science. So it is no small feat to create an inexpensive fluorescent microscope, an instrument often used by medical researchers. This is what Ely Silk, 65, a retired business owner and former IBM programmer, did in 2002 when the mercury lightbulb in his regular fluorescent microscope reached the end of its one- to two-month life span. He replaced the mercury bulb (which can cost hundreds of dollars) with a small collection of long-life LEDs emitting a variety of wavelengths. The LEDs cost only a few dollars apiece, and they eased Silk’s mind too. “I didn’t like the idea of looking through a microscope where 12 inches away from me is something that may explode,” he says. “It just made me uncomfortable.”

Silk continued to adapt the microscope so that it could, like high-end fluorescent microscopes, detect materials such as chlorophyll or fluorescent dyes, which emit light when irradiated with specific light wavelengths. The result is a microscope affordable enough for almost any high school biology lab or rural medical facility. Silk suggests that his microscope design could be used for screening patients’ sputum for tuberculosis.