A few nights ago I was talking with my wife about fame (i.e., what makes someone a ‘superstar’) – it’s pretty easy to understand why so many actors/actresses, musicians, and writers are household names (whether or not you like Ben Affleck or Shakira, many people know who they are…) The average person might not be able to name a living artist or dancer, though I bet a number of people would say “”http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/“>Christo and Jeanne-Claude” and “”http://www.baryshnikovdancefoundation.org/“>Baryshnikov”…

But if you asked the average person to name a famous living chemist, I wonder if they could name anyone… (This is probably not true in Japan, since Nobel laureates have a unique “”http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040119/full/427282a.html">celebrity status," but in most other countries I wonder what the average person would say…)

So the million dollar question is can anything be done about this? (A related question is should anything be done about this, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that something should be done about this…) Movies are certainly the easiest way to inform the general public: Awakenings, A Beautiful Mind, and Kinsey helped popularize the names “”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sachs">Oliver Sacks," “”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash">John Nash," and “”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey">Alfred Kinsey."

So do we need a movie about Barry Sharpless? Or, as someone suggested on “In the Pipeline,” should The Billion Dollar Molecule be made into a movie? I don’t know about you, but I’d watch a movie about RB Woodward – from all the stories I’ve heard, he sounded like an interesting guy…

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)