Working with inventor Dean Kamen, Flowers helped design the organization's competition structure based loosely around his 2.70 class at MIT.

[5] His father, Abe Flowers, was a welder and inventor; his mother, Bertie Graham, was an elementary-school and special education teacher.

The event ingrained his self-described "genetic opposition to violence" and his "fierce, vocal loathing of any spectacle that involves crashing pieces of machinery into each other with deliberate force.

[9][10][a] After receiving his doctorate, Flowers began as an assistant professor at MIT, working with Herb Richardson on the "Introduction to Design and Manufacturing" class.

[15] Discover: the World of Science changed its name to Scientific American Frontiers in 1990, and Flowers served as its host[16] until 1993 when he was replaced by Alan Alda.

[26] Flowers was a "Distinguished Partner" at Olin College, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Flowers was known for having an eclectic selection of hobbies, including wildlife photography, scuba diving, unicycling, skydiving, and trapeze.