I can't speak to the quantum party, but that stood out to me as well > but it is sure that Carl Sagan, in his classic TV series Cosmos (1980), was crucial in p

I can't speak to the quantum party, but that stood out to me as well > but it is sure that Carl Sagan, in his classic TV series Cosmos (1980), was crucial in popularising it I would say it was popularized by teaching the gold foil experiment in middle school physics. (That said, it seems like a minor point of the article.)