Lynn Poole

Lynn D. Poole (August 11, 1910 – April 14, 1969) was the creator and host of an early U.S. science television program, The Johns Hopkins Science Review (1948–1955), and the author of more than 20 popular science books. Marcel LaFollette argues that contemporary science television such as NOVA and the Discovery Channel are derived from the innovations of Poole and others.

Poole was born in Eagle Grove, Iowa. He received his bachelor's degree from Western Reserve University in 1936, and a master's degree in 1937. In 1938 he joined the staff of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where he directed the education department. In 1941 he married Gray Johnson, then working as a journalist at The Evening Sun. In the April 21, 1952 episode, a scientist drank a solution containing the radioactive isotope of iodine, and then followed its progress in his own body with a Geiger counter. Poole then visited England to film a three-part series "An American Looks at Science in England". He occasionally did demonstrations himself, such as climbing a TV transmitter mast or eating a grasshopper on live television. The guests included national figures like rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (October 20, 1952). Some shows served as conduits for public information, as in the show of April 3, 1951 on biological warfare, which featured Norman Kiefer of the Federal Civil Defense Administration. Poole produced three successor series through 1960, when Johns Hopkins ended production. Kinescope films survived for many episodes of these series, which is unusual for early live television. Copies have been archived at the Johns Hopkins library. LaFollette notes that, "Production approaches that are now standard practice on NOVA and the Discovery Channel derive, in fact, from experimentation by television pioneers like Lynn Poole and Don Herbert and such programs as Adventure, Zoo Parade, Science in Action, and the Bell Telephone System's science specials. These early efforts were also influenced by television's love of the dramatic, refined during its first decade and continuing to shape news and public affairs programming, as well as fiction and fantasy, today." An early title related to several episodes of the Science Review program was Your Trip into Space (1953). A second volume that was noted in The New York Times was Science: The Super Sleuth (1954), which was about forensic science. Many of his books were published after his television work ceased in 1960.

Poole and his wife Gray Johnson Poole wrote at least 16 nonfiction books together, beginning in 1960 with Scientists Who Changed the World, published by Dodd, Mead in its Makers of Our Modern World series. The Pooles also published at least one novel, The Magnificent Traitor; a Novel of Alcibiades and the Golden Age of Pericles (1968). One Passion, Two Loves; the story of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann, discoverers of Troy (Crowell, 1966) is their work most widely held in WorldCat libraries.

Poole retired from Johns Hopkins in 1965, but continued his writing career. Poole died of a heart attack in 1969, at the age of 58. He'd had the first of several heart attacks in 1957, and of course had published a book, I am a Chronic Cardiac (1964), about his experiences.

Gray Poole wrote at least four more books that were published during the 1970s.

The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg holds an unprocessed collection of the papers of Lynn and Gray Johnson Poole.