Authors
Tom Levenson
In the photo at right I’m enjoying an oxygen break at 17,000 feet up in the Atacama Desert, where I and my crew were working on a film about the deep prehistory of the origin of species. My day job is less rarefied: I am am a professor of science writing at MIT and I run the Graduate Program in Science Writing there.
Below is what I look like when I clean up a bit.
I both write and produce documentary film on science its history, and its interaction with the broader culture in which scientific lives and discoveries unfold. Coming this June, my fourth book, Newton and the Counterfeiter will tell the story of a little-known episode in Isaac Newton’s life through which can be read an alternate history of the man and the various revolutions in which he took part. Previous books include: Einstein in Berlin; Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science; and Ice Time: Climate Science and Life on Earth.
My documentaries have mostly appeared on PBS, and most of those on the NOVA series. Recent work includes the Origins series, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson and broadcast on NOVA — (my favorite is program four, the cosmology show, “Back to the Beginning”); the “Domes” program in David Macaulay’s delightful PBS series Building Big, and NOVA’s two hour Einstein Revealed, now a little long in the tooth, but featuring a nice turn by Andrew Sacks as Albert Einstein. (You may have seen Sacks in one of the great television comedy roles: Manuel the Spanish Waiter in Fawlty Towers.) I’ve been fortunate enough to win my share of prizes, including a Peabody, the National Academies Science Communication Award, and a AAAS/Westinghouse Award. I’ve also been blogging about science and the public square for the last year at The Inverse Square Blog – and that effort that will keep ticking over, albeit a bit more slowly, whilst Darwin comes to call.
Besides writing, film making and generally being dour about the daily news, I lead an almost entirely conventional life in one of Boston’s inner suburbs with a family that gives me great joy. The new cat has to stop waking me up at five a.m., however.
Janet Browne
Janet Browne is the Aramont Professor in the History of Science at Harvard University. She has been editor of the British Journal for the History of Science and president of the British Society for the History of Science. She was an associate editor of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, and has published a two-volume biography of Darwin’s life. The second volume, The Power of Place (2002) following Darwin’s life through the publication of The Origin of Species and until his death, was the recipient of the James Tait Black award for non-fiction in 2004, the WH.Heinemann Prize from the Royal Literary Society, and the Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society.
(Photograph courtesy of Sage Ross/Wikimedia Commons. License here.)
Sean B. Carroll
Sean Carroll is Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin. His research has centered on the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. Major discoveries from his laboratory have been featured in TIME, US News & World Report, The New York Times, Discover, and Natural History.
Sean is the author of The Making of the Fittest (2006, W.W. Norton) and of Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo(2005, W.W. Norton). He is also co-author with Jen Grenier and Scott Weatherbee of the textbook From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design (2nd ed, 2005; Blackwell Scientific) and with Anthony Griffiths, Richard Lewontin, and Susan Wessler of the textbook Introduction to Genetic Analysis(9e, 2007, W.H. Freeman and Co.). He is also the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers.
Sean is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (elected 2007) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Shaw Scientist Award of the Milwaukee Foundation, and numerous honorary lectureships. Sean was named one of America’s most promising leaders under 40 by TIME Magazine in 1994.
John Durant
John Durant is a historian and sociologist of science, with a special interest in the relationship between science and the public.
John received his BA in Natural Sciences (Zoology) from Queens’ College, University of Cambridge in 1972 and went on to take a PhD in the history of late-19th century evolutionary biology, also at Cambridge, in 1977. After more than a decade in University Continuing Education (first, at the University of Swansea, and then at the University of Oxford), in 1989 he was appointed Assistant Director and Head of Science Communication at the Science Museum, London and Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Imperial College, London. In 2000, he was appointed Chief Executive of At-Bristol, a new independent science centre in the West of England. He came to MIT in July 2005, to take up a joint appointment as Director of the MIT Museum and Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology & Society Program.
John has published widely on the history of evolutionary biology and animal behavior, and on public perceptions of science and technology; and he is the founder editor of the journal Public Understanding of Science. In addition to directing the MIT Museum, he is the Executive Director of the Cambridge (MA) Science Festival, a 9-day celebration of science and technology each spring. The 2008 Cambridge Science Festival will feature several special events designed to mark the Darwin bi-centenary.
Carl Zimmer
The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer “as fine a science essayist as we have.” In his books, essays, articles, and blog posts, Zimmer reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. He is a frequent guest on radio programs, such as Fresh Air and This American Life. He also lectures at universities, medical schools, and museums.
Zimmer’s books include Soul Made Flesh, a history of the brain, which was named one of the top 100 books of 2004 by The New York Times Book Review, and dubbed a “tour-de-force” by The Sunday Telegraph. His book, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea—“as fine a book as one will find on the subject” according to Scientific American—has recently been reissued with a new introduction. His other books include At the Water’s Edge, a book about major transitions in the history of life; The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins; and Parasite Rex, which the Los Angeles Times described as “a book capable of changing how we see the world.”
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, Zimmer’s latest book, was published in May 2008 by Pantheon. In this unnatural history of this astonishingly complex germ Zimmer reflects on the nature of life itself. Publisher’s Weekly has praised the book: “Written in elegant, often poetic prose, Zimmer’s well-crafted exploration should be required reading for all well-educated readers.”
(Photo: Ben Stechschulte, text from here.)
Ellen Bales
Ellen Bales is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Chicago. Her dissertation research is on the history of probabilistic risk assessment in the United States as a tool of federal regulation, focusing in particular on case studies involving carcinogenic radon gas. She will be receiving her Ph.D. in the spring of 2009. Her next project focuses on the history of public health, specifically on the ways in the late-20th century where the United States government attempted to create “ideal publics” by strictly communicative means.
Alex Wellerstein
Alex Wellerstein is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University. He graduated with a B.A. with High Honors in the History of Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002. His dissertation work is on the history of nuclear weapons secrecy in the United States from the Manhattan Project through the War on Terror. Through this work he discovered that during World War II the United States government had filed literally thousands of secret patents on every aspect of the atomic bomb. This discovery led to his first academic publications, and an appearance on NPR’s Morning Edition. His other long-term research interests include the history of hereditary thought and practice in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. He has done web development and graphic design in a variety of academic contexts and for the U.S. Department of Energy. He is responsible for the design and maintenance of this site, among other things.