"The media has enormous power to influence people's attitudes," says John Kao, Chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation and the author of the book Innovation Nation. "During the Sputnik era, Walt Disney put out a series called Men in Space and it's hard to overstate how influential that TV series was for a generation of scientists and engineers."

Filling the gap in engineering talent will take more than hip characters on TV, Kao says. "It's a condiment to the main course." "We are in danger of having our educational enterprise founder because of a lack of qualified math and science teachers."

Bloomberg BusinessWeek: "Boeing Enlists Hollywood to Make Engineering Cool."

Got time and a comfy chair? Compare your picks with Hollywood Science by Sidney Perkowitz.

"In this book, Perkowitz, a scientist and dedicated film enthusiast, discusses the portrayal of science in more than one hundred films, including science fiction, scientific biographies, and documentaries. Beginning with early films like Voyage to the Moon and Metropolis and concluding with more recent offerings like The Matrix, War of the Worlds, A Beautiful Mind, and An Inconvenient Truth.

"These films explore a range of complex topics in vivid and accessible ways, from space travel and laser technology to genetic engineering, global warming, and the consequences of nuclear weaponry.

"Movies, especially science-fiction films, temporarily remove viewers from the world as they know it and show them the world as it might be, providing special perspective on human nature and society.

"Sid's best picks: Gattaca, Metropolis, The Day the Earth Stood Still, On the Beach, A Beautiful Mind and Contact.

"There's even a pick for the real-life saga: October Sky, the story of former NASA Engineer Homer Hickam. The movie, which details Hickam's effort to learn rocket science while growing up in Coalwood, WV, should be required viewing for all American high school physics students. It may be Hollywood's only movie that portrays a bright young science student as a normal child."

Here's a compilation of stories of scientists and engineers frolicking with our past, present and future.

Engineers and scientists as movie heroes:

Movies: A-L

Movies: M-Z