In 2017, a year when Americans were transfixed by a solar eclipse that spanned the U.S. from the Pacific to the Atlantic, David Baron (’90) published a tantalizing account of a different eclipse that captured the nation’s imagination more than a century earlier. “American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World,” recounted the Great American Eclipse of 1878 and was widely praised by critics, winning the American Institute of Physics’ 2018 Science Writing Award and making the short list for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize, National Academies Communication Awards, and Colorado Book Award.
Now, six years later, the book is being adapted into a musical. Baron attended the first workshop production, in New York, last November, and describes it as “a glorious, operatic piece — with a cast of twenty-five — created by the Tony-nominated composer/lyricist Michael John LaChiusa.”
Among the leading characters are Thomas Edison, who witnessed the 1878 solar eclipse from Wyoming right before he invented his light bulb, and Maria Mitchell, a pioneering Vassar College astronomer who headed an all-female eclipse expedition to Denver, to show what women could do in science.
The musical’s producers are now looking for a theater to stage a full production, Baron says, ideally near the time when the next total solar eclipse crosses the U.S., on April 8, 2024.
A trio of KSJ Alumni have won prestigious journalism fellowships.
Duy Linh Tu (‘21) was selected as a 2023 fellow in the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Logan Science Journalism Program. Tu will spend a week and a half diving into hands-on laboratory training at the fabled research campus in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Virginia Gewin (‘22) was one of five journalists selected by the University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism to receive a reporting and engagement grant from its 2023 California Health Equity Impact Fund. The grants support journalists “as they undertake ambitious explanatory and investigative reporting projects about California’s health challenges and opportunities for change.” Gewin’s project will highlight how toxic dust from the Salton Sea affects the health of migrant farmworker families in the Imperial and Coachella valleys. It is a continuation of a project she worked on as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow in 2022.
Jyoti Madhusoodanan (‘21) was named a 2023 Alicia Patterson Fellow, and will use the award to do reporting on clinical trials – a continuation of work she began as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. The Alicia Patterson Fellowships, established in 1965, award $40,000 for a 12-month grant and $20,000 for a six-month grant, and support journalists as they travel, research and write articles for the APF Reporter, an online magazine.
In March, Richard Fisher (’20) published his debut book “The Long View,” a wide-ranging exploration of the importance of long-term thinking.
From the publisher’s page: “Richard Fisher takes us from the boardrooms of Japan – home to some of the world’s oldest businesses – to an Australian laboratory where an experiment started a century ago is still going strong. He examines the psychological biases that discourage the long view, and talks to the growing number of people from the worlds of philosophy, technology, science and the arts who are exploring smart ways to overcome them. How can we learn to widen our perception of time and honour our obligations to the lives of those not yet born?”
The book is already receiving glowing reviews and high praise. Ian McEwan called it “a beautifully turned, calmly persuasive but urgent book.”
If you missed former fellow Anil Ananthaswamy (‘20) on the TED main stage last year, you can now watch a video recording of his deeply insightful talk. Ananthaswamy, author of several acclaimed books about physics, presents a scientific take on the question, Where does your sense of self come from? He shares how the experiences of ‘altered selves’ — resulting from schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, foreign limb syndrome or other conditions — shed light on the constructed nature of identity. The talk was originally given at the TED2022 conference last April in Vancouver.
The prolific Jason Bittel (‘21) is now out with his latest book, “The Frozen Worlds: The Astonishing Nature of the Arctic and Antarctic,” published by DK Children, a part of Penguin Random House. Described by its publisher as “a gorgeously illustrated book for young animal and conservation enthusiasts,” the book takes children on a sub-zero journey of the amazing Earth’s poles. “Polar bears and penguins glide and whales and walruses dive across the pages of this colorful book.”
Bittel also remains at work on his upcoming, “Sort of Funny Field Guide,” a project he began as a KSJ Project Fellow that will explore “the secret lives and oddball behaviors of iconic North American species from the lightning bug to the bison.”
The Undark magazine special series “Long Division: The Persistence of Race Science,” a package of stories that explores science’s long, troubled relationship with race, was named a finalist in the National Magazine Awards’ Single-Topic Issue category. The project included contributions from an array of KSJ alumni: Jyoti Madhusoodanan (’21), Angela Saini (‘13), Ashley Smart (’16), Duy Linh Tu (’21), Undark Editor-in-Chief Tom Zeller (‘14), and KSJ Director Deborah Blum. You can read the full series here.
The Knight Science Journalism community mourns the loss of Cordula Klemm (‘93), who passed away on March 9, 2023. Klemm is remembered by fellow KSJ alum Monika Weiner (‘92) as “a wonderful person who had the ability always to look on the bright side of life and to cheer people up with her positive perspective.”
From Thomas Müller (’93), a member of Klemm’s fellowship class:
Always she was around when help was needed, always she was in for the bigger whole, her personal wishes and hopes came after. That was true for her professional life at the Helmholtz Center in Munich, where at the end of her career, she was responsible for crossmedia- and print-projects. And even more in her private life in Bellenberg in Western Bavaria, where she lived with her family.
One thing I especially cherished about Cordula was her writing. Most often the texts I read from her were private emails. But these weren’t just emails, Cordula wrote real letters, in a carefully drafted language, with a lot of wit and humor. They were full of precisely described details, and told what was going on in the family, with the mill, in the village, at work, in German politics. Mostly I was too lazy to write back and phoned instead. I will miss this often hour long conversations.
Klemm will be dearly missed by all who knew her.
Here’s what KSJ alumni are writing, a compendium by Federico Kukso (’16):
Anil Ananthaswamy (‘20): “Is Our Universe a Hologram? Physicists Debate Famous Idea on Its 25th Anniversary,” Scientific American.
Pam Belluck (‘08): “The Father of the Abortion Pill,” New York Times.
Bethany Brookshire (’20): “In mice, anxiety isn’t all in the head. It can start in the heart,” Science News.
Kimani Chege (’09): “Can plastic bricks pave a road out of Kenya’s plastic waste problem?” Unbias the News.
Zack Colman (’16): “US, EU search for climate truce — and a united front against China,” Politico (with Karl Mathiesen).
Isabella Cueto (’21): “‘That is my dream’: Scientist who uncovered likely leading cause of MS wants to tackle ALS next,” STAT.
Herton Escobar (‘07): “Chagas disease shaped the genome of native peoples of the Amazon,” Jornal da USP (in Portuguese).
Dan Falk (‘12): “Scientists Attempt to Map the Multiverse,” Discovery.
Andrada Fiscutean (‘20): “Cybersecurity in wartime: how Ukraine’s infosec community is coping,” CSO.
Amanda Gefter (‘13): “What Plants Are Saying About Us,” Nautilus.
Virginia Gewin (‘22): “How a dangerous stew of air pollution is choking the United States,” Nature.
Rachel E. Gross (‘19): “Please Don’t Call My Cervix Incompetent,” The Atlantic.
Melanie Kaplan (‘22): “Coprolite Happens,” National Parks Conservation Association.
Eli Kintisch (‘12): “How is artificial intelligence changing education?” Scripps News. (with Maya Rodriguez)
Federico Kukso (‘16): “Living and dying online: the Internet has forever changed our relationship with death,” Agencia Sinc (in Spanish).
Lynda Mapes (‘14): “Salmon Parks: Inside a movement to conserve Pacific Northwest old growth,” Seattle Times (with Erika Schultz, Lauren Frohne).
Usha Lee McFarling (‘93): “National Academies calls for transforming use of racial and ethnic labels in genetics research,” STAT.
Lourdes Medrano (’21): “The deep roots of Mexico’s trade dispute with U.S. over GMO corn,” Food & Environment Reporting Network.
John Muchangi (‘13): “Dangerous new malaria parasite discovered in Kenya,” The Star.
Valeria Román (‘06): “For the first time, a superbacteria resistant to 30 antibiotics was detected in patients in Argentina,” Infobae (in Spanish).
Fabio Turone (‘17): “Sapienza to lead ‘digital twins for health’ project,” Research Professional News.
Jared Whitlock (‘22): “Rare disease trials can’t find enough patients. It’s forcing the FDA to rethink its approach” Endpoints News (subscription required).
Eva Wolfangel (‘20): “In bad company: Tens of thousands are on the US terror lists and are not allowed to enter the country,” Die Zeitgeist (in German, with Kai Biermann).
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