Charles Seife

Charles Seife is an American author, journalist, and professor at New York University. He has written extensively on scientific and mathematical topics.

Career

Seife holds a mathematics degree from Princeton University (1993), ^[1] an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University. ^[2]

Seife wrote for Science magazine and New Scientist before joining the Department of Journalism at New York University where he became a professor. ^[2]

Books

His first and best-known published book is Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000). ^[3]

Another well-known book from Seife is Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled By the Numbers (Penguin, 2010). ^[4] Here, Seife focuses on how much propaganda uses numbers worded in such a way that they confuse people and can be misinterpreted. ^[5]

Other books by Seife are:

• Alpha & Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe , Penguin Putnam, 2003. ISBN   0-670-03179-8
• Decoding the Universe , Penguin, 2007. ISBN   978-0-14-303839-9
• Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking, Viking, 2008. ISBN   978-0-670-02033-1 ^[6]
• Virtual Unreality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Penguin Putnam, 2014. ISBN   0-670-02608-5 ^[7]
• Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity, Basic Books, 2021. ISBN   9781541618374 ^[8]

Other writing

Seife's freelance work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer , The Washington Post , The New York Times , Scientific American , and The Economist , among others. ^[2] Throughout his career, he has written many book reviews, especially of books which focus on mathematics. Seife also wrote an essay which is currently featured in Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing . His essay, “The Loneliness of The Interconnected,” focuses on how the internet may make its users more isolated.

Professional associations

Seife is a member of PEN, the National Association of Science Writers, and the D.C. Science Writers Association.^{[ citation needed ]}

Awards

• 2001 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction for Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

References

1. Greenwood, Katherine Federici (13 October 2010). Numbers can mislead - Charles Seife ’93 reveals mischief behind data, Princeton Alumni Weekly
2. Journalism at NYU - Faculty Archived April 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
3. Seife, Charles (2000). Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea . New York: Penguin Books. ISBN   9780140296471.
4. Seife, Charles (2010). Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled by the Numbers. New York: Penguin. ISBN   978-0-14-312007-0.
5. Steven Strogatz, Fibbing With Numbers, The New York Times, 17 September 2010
6. Seife, Charles (2008). Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. Penguin. ISBN   9780670020331.
7. Seife, Charles (2015-08-04). Virtual Unreality: The New Era of Digital Deception. Penguin. ISBN   9780143127673; pbk
8. Seife, Charles (2021). Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity. Basic Books. ISBN   978-1-5416-1837-4.

External links

• Article on edge.org Archived 2017-07-06 at the Wayback Machine
• DC Science Writers Association website
• Homepage
• Leonard Lopate interview with Charles Seife
• Appearances on C-SPAN