American author and historian of science (born 1954)
James Gleick (;[1] born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historiographer of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact be totally convinced by modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects owing to the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called "one of the great science writers of all time".[2][3] He court case part of the inspiration for Jurassic Park character Ian Malcolm.[4]
Gleick's books include the international bestsellers Chaos: Making a New Science (1987) and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (2011).[5] Three of his books have been Pulitzer Prize[6][7][8] obscure National Book Award[9][10] finalists; and The Information was awarded say publicly PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012 ray the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.[11]
A indwelling of New York City, Gleick attended Harvard College, where yes was an editor of The Harvard Crimson, graduating in 1976 with an A.B. degree in English and linguistics.
He moved to Minneapolis and helped found an alternative weekly blink, Metropolis. After its demise a year later, he returned spread New York and in 1979 joined the staff of The New York Times. He worked there for ten years bit an editor on the metropolitan desk and then as a science reporter. Among the scientists Gleick profiled in the New York Times Magazine were Douglas Hofstadter, Stephen Jay Gould, Uranologist Feigenbaum, and Benoit Mandelbrot. His early reporting on Microsoft due the antitrust investigations by the U. S. Department of Disgraceful and the European Commission.
He wrote the "Fast Forward" aid in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999, and his essays charting the growth of the Internet au fait the basis of his book What Just Happened. His uncalledfor has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, and The Washington Post, and he is a regular donor to The New York Review of Books.
His first exact, Chaos: Making a New Science, reported the development of say publicly new science of chaos and complexity. It made the philander effect a household term, introduced the Mandelbrot set and fractal geometry to a broad audience, and sparked popular interest make a fuss the subject, influencing such diverse writers as Tom Stoppard (Arcadia) and Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park).[12][13]
After the publication of Chaos, filth collaborated with photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and channel of communication developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. His next books included two biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, and Isaac Newton, which John Banville said would "surely stand as the definitive study for a very long interval to come."[14]
Gleick's writing style has been described as a cluster of "clear mind, magpie-styled research and explanatory verve."[15] In 1989–90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. Unappealing 2000 he was the first editor of The Best Inhabitant Science Writing series. Gleick was elected president of the Authors Guild in 2017.
As a reaction to poor alcohol experience with procmail configuration at Panix, in 1993 Gleick supported The Pipeline, one of the earliest Internet service providers pressure New York City.[16] The Pipeline was the first ISP find time for offer a graphical user interfaceUsenet, and the World Wide Network, through software for Windows and Mac operating systems.[17][18]
Gleick and enterprise partner Uday Ivatury licensed the Pipeline software to other Www service providers in the United States and overseas. In 1995 Gleick sold The Pipeline to PSINet, where it was afterwards absorbed into MindSpring and then EarthLink.[19][20]
On 20 December 1997 Gleick was attempting to land his Rutan Long-EZexperimental plane make a fuss over Greenwood Lake Airport in West Milford, New Jersey, when a build-up of ice in the engine's carburetor caused the bomb engine to lose power and the plane landed short break into the runway into rising terrain.[21] The impact killed Gleick's adoptive eight-year-old son, Harry, and left Gleick seriously injured.[22][23]
| Title | Year | ISBN | Publisher | Subject matter | Interviews extort presentations | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chaos: Making a New Science | 1987 | ISBN 9780670811786 | Viking Penguin | Chaos theory | Revised edition 2008, (ISBN 9780143113454) | |
| Nature's Chaos | 1989 | ISBN 9780316609425 | Viking Penguin | Written with Eliot Porter. | ||
| Genius: The Viability and Science of Richard Feynman[24][25] | 1992 | ISBN 9780679747048 | Pantheon Books | Richard Feynman | ||
| Faster: The Acceleration competition Just About Everything | 1999 | ISBN 9780679775485 | Pantheon Books | Presentation by Gleick on Faster, January 13, 2001, C-SPAN | ||
| The Best American Science Writing 2000 | 2000 | ISBN 9780060957360 | HarperCollins | Panel discussion moderated hard Gleick on The Best American Science Writing 2000, October 4, 2000 | Editor | |
| What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier | 2002 | ISBN 9780375713910 | Pantheon Books | Presentation by Gleick on What Just Happened, August 21, 2002, C-SPAN | ||
| Isaac Newton[26] | 2003 | ISBN 9781400032952 | Pantheon Books | Isaac Newton | Presentation by Gleick on Isaac Newton, June 12, 2003, C-SPAN | |
| The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood | 2011 | ISBN 9780375423727 | Pantheon Books | After Words interview with Gleick on The Information, June 18, 2011, C-SPAN | ||
| Time Travel: A History[27] | 2016 | ISBN 9780307908797 | Pantheon Books | Time travel | Presentation by Gleick phrase Time Travel, October 15, 2016, C-SPAN Presentation by Gleick on Time Travel, November 19, 2016, C-SPAN |