The Lemelson Center’s award-winning Innovative Lives public program series brings audiences of all ages and backgrounds face-to-face with diverse inventors and innovation leaders to engage in a public conversation about their pioneering work and careers.
The goals of Innovative Lives are to spark interest in invention, encourage creative thinking, enhance learning about American history, and make STEM-based education more dynamic. By featuring inventors representing racial, age, and gender diversity, Innovative Lives aims to break down commonly held stereotypes about inventors and provides positive role models for youth and families. Through discussions with inventors and complementary hands-on invention activities in Spark!Lab, participants develop an appreciation for problem-solving, collaboration, adaptability, and risk-taking, and learn to see themselves as potential future inventors. True to the Center’s mission, this program’s central message is always: “Everyone is inventive.”
Since 1995, we have produced at least sixty-two Innovative Lives programs, about 50 percent of them featuring contemporary women and/or minority inventors such as physician Patricia Bath, inventor of the Laserphaco Probe for treating cataracts, and engineer Lonnie Johnson, who is best known for inventing the Super Soaker toy. We have also featured inventors with disabilities like Van Phillips, inventor and user of Flex-Foot and “cheetah” leg artificial limbs. Diverse inventors like these serve as powerful role models for the hundreds of thousands of people—especially young people—who have attended Innovative Lives programs at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), participated remotely during webcasts, or watched videos on our website where we continue to add new Innovative Lives captioned videos as the series continues.
Super Soaker inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur Lonnie Johnson being interviewed by Lisa Cook about his inventive career as part of the Innovative Lives series, February 2018. © Smithsonian Institution; photo by Jaclyn Nash
Innovative Lives programs form the core of an array of research and educational offerings that, over more than two decades, have grown into a rich set of resources for our many audiences. The Lemelson Center collaborates with the NMAH Archives Center to acquire and make accessible collections documenting the history of invention. For example, the papers of Innovative Lives presenter Newman Darby, who invented the sailboard (now known as the windsurfer), are among those available to Archives researchers. The Center has also added many video and audio oral history interviews to the Archives, along with valuable ancillary material. In addition, the Center works with NMAH curatorial divisions to collect invention-related artifacts, including such items as Darby’s homemade sailboard and sail, and artificial legs made by the company Ossur that are based on Van Phillips’s patents.
“Cheetah Leg” inventor Van Phillips demonstrating his prosthetic leg designed for running during an Innovative Lives program, February 2004. © Smithsonian Institution; photo by Richard Strauss
Innovative Lives inventors also played featured roles in Lemelson Center exhibitions, including Nobel Voices: Celebrating 100 Years of the Nobel Prize, which showcased the vision and creativity of Nobel prize-winners and their drive to invent. Laureates featured in the exhibition who also participated in the Innovative Lives series include Harry Kroto, William Phillips, and Charles Townes.
Left: Electret microphone inventor and engineering professor Jim West, 2012. Photo by Will Kirk, courtesy of Johns Hopkins University. Right: Dance professor Merry Lynn Morris demonstrating her “Rolling Dance Chair” invented for people with disabilities, 2018. Photo by David Shelor, courtesy of Merry Lynn Morris
The Center’s award-winning Invention at Play traveling exhibition, supported in part by the Lemelson Foundation and the National Science Foundation, featured thirteen Innovative Lives presenters—from Kevlar inventor Stephanie Kwolek to robotic ants’ inventor James McLurkin. More recent exhibitions currently on display at NMAH in the Lemelson Hall of Invention and Innovation—Inventive Minds, Places of Invention, and Spark!Lab—have featured a wide array of our Innovative Lives presenters, including 2019 participants Merry Lynn Morris, J Rawls, and Jim West.
Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention by Kathryn D. Sullivan, former astronaut and first American woman to walk in space, will be published in Fall 2019 as part of the Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation book series with MIT Press. Sullivan will be the guest at Innovative Lives on 4 December 2019. Courtesy MIT Press.
Please join us in the evening on December 4 for our final Innovative Lives program this year featuring astronaut and inventor Kathryn Sullivan, in conjunction with the publication of her new book Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention, part of the Lemelson-MIT Press series.
As the Lemelson Center looks forward to our 25th anniversary at NMAH in 2020, we hope to expand our reach to ever broader audiences and continue to share diverse inventors’ stories beyond the Smithsonian’s borders with museums and invention education organizations across the country. The Center is currently planning its next major exhibition, Game Changers, scheduled to succeed Places of Invention in late 2022. Building on research for the exhibition, as well as the Smithsonian’s 2020 Year of the Woman theme, we are eager to highlight both women athletes and sports inventors in Innovative Lives programming next year. We will share more information on the Events page as it becomes available!