American author and historian of science (born 1954)
James Gleick
(
;
[1]
born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called "one of the great science writers of all time".
[2]
[3]
He is 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]
and
National Book Award
[9]
[10]
finalists; and
The Information
was awarded the
PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
in 2012 and the
Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books
2012. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.
[11]
Life
[
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]
A native of
New York City
, Gleick attended
Harvard College
, where he 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 newspaper
,
Metropolis
. After its demise a year later, he returned to New York and in 1979 joined the staff of
The New York Times
. He worked there for ten years as 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
,
Mitchell Feigenbaum
, and
Benoit Mandelbrot
.
His early reporting on
Microsoft
anticipated the
antitrust
investigations by the
U. S. Department of Justice
and the
European Commission
.
He wrote the "Fast Forward" column in the
New York Times Magazine
from 1995 to 1999, and his essays charting the growth of the Internet formed the basis of his book
What Just Happened
.
His work has also appeared in
The New Yorker
,
the Atlantic
,
Slate
, and
The Washington Post
, and he is a regular contributor to
The New York Review of Books
.
His first book,
Chaos: Making a New Science
, reported the development of the new science of
chaos
and complexity. It made the
Butterfly Effect
a household term, introduced the
Mandelbrot Set
and
fractal geometry
to a broad audience, and sparked popular interest in the subject, influencing such diverse writers as
Tom Stoppard
(
Arcadia
) and
Michael Crichton
(
Jurassic Park
).
[12]
[13]
The Pipeline
[
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]
As a reaction to poor user experience with
procmail
configuration at
Panix
, in 1993 Gleick founded
The Pipeline
, one of the earliest Internet service providers in New York City.
[14]
The Pipeline was the first ISP to offer a
graphical user interface
, incorporating e-mail, chat,
Usenet
, and the
World Wide Web
, through software for Windows and Mac operating systems.
[15]
[16]
Gleick and business partner Uday Ivatury licensed the Pipeline software to other Internet service providers in the United States and overseas. In 1995 Gleick sold The Pipeline to PSINet, where it was later absorbed into
MindSpring
and then
EarthLink
.
[17]
[18]
Aircraft accident
[
edit
]
On 20 December 1997 Gleick was attempting to land his
Rutan Long-EZ
experimental plane
at
Greenwood Lake Airport
in
West Milford, New Jersey
, when a build-up of ice in the engine's carburetor caused the aircraft engine to lose power and the plane landed short of the runway into rising terrain.
[19]
The impact killed Gleick's adopted eight-year-old son, Harry, and left Gleick seriously injured.
[20]
[21]
Work
[
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]
Gleick's writing style has been described as a combination of "clear mind, magpie-styled research and explanatory verve."
[22]
After the publication of
Chaos
, he collaborated with photographer
Eliot Porter
on
Nature's Chaos
and with developers at
Autodesk
on
Chaos: The Software
.
In 1989?90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at
Princeton University
.
He was the first editor of
The Best American Science Writing
series.
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 time to come."
[23]
In 2017 Gleick was elected president of the
Authors Guild
.
Bibliography
[
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]
Books
[
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]
Title
|
Year
|
ISBN
|
Publisher
|
Subject matter
|
Interviews and 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 Life and Science of Richard Feynman
[24]
[25]
|
1992
|
ISBN
9780679747048
|
Pantheon Books
|
Richard Feynman
|
|
|
Faster: The Acceleration of 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 by 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 on
Time Travel
, October 15, 2016
,
C-SPAN
Presentation by Gleick on
Time Travel
, November 19, 2016
,
C-SPAN
|
|
Articles
[
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]
- James Gleick, "The Fate of Free Will" (review of
Kevin J. Mitchell
,
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
, Princeton University Press, 2023, 333 pp.),
The New York Review of Books
, vol. LXXI, no. 1 (18 January 2024), pp. 27?28, 30. "
Agency
is what distinguishes us from machines. For biological creatures,
reason
and
purpose
come from acting in the world and experiencing the consequences.
Artificial intelligences
? disembodied, strangers to blood, sweat, and tears ? have no occasion for that." (p. 30.)
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"James Gleick Interview and Reading"
on
YouTube
- ^
"Study Guide: James Gleick"
. E Notes.
- ^
Doctorow, Cory (March 24, 2011).
"James Gleick's tour-de-force: The Information, a natural history of information theory"
.
Boing Boing
. Retrieved
29 May
2014
.
- ^
"Chaos Effect in Jurassic Park"
.
study.com
. Retrieved
14 February
2022
.
- ^
"James Gleick: Bibliography"
.
Amazon.com
. Retrieved
April 14,
2011
.
- ^
Gleick, James.
"1988 Finalists"
.
Chaos: Making a new Science
. The Pulitzer Prizes
. Retrieved
28 May
2011
.
- ^
Gleick, James.
"1993 Finalists"
.
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
. The Pulitzer Prizes
. Retrieved
28 May
2011
.
- ^
Gleick, James.
"2004 Finalists"
.
Isaac Newton
. The Pulitzer Prizes
. Retrieved
28 May
2011
.
- ^
Gleick, James.
"National Book Awards ? 1987"
.
Chaos: Making a New Science
. National Book Foundation
. Retrieved
28 May
2011
.
- ^
Gleick, James.
"National Book Awards ? 1992"
.
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
.
National Book Foundation
. Retrieved
28 May
2011
.
- ^
Gleick, James (24 November 2010).
"About"
.
Bits in the Ether
. Author's website
. Retrieved
14 June
2011
.
- ^
Delaney, Paul (1994).
Tom Stoppard in Conversation
. University of Michigan Press. p. 224.
- ^
Crichton, Michael (1990).
Jurassic Park
. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 400.
- ^
Joel Spolsky
(April 2000).
"Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers"
.
- ^
Batelle, John (November 1994).
"Pipeline"
.
Wired
. Retrieved
March 23,
2009
.
- ^
Michalski, Jerry
(January 31, 1994).
"Pipeline: Not Just Another Pretty Face"
(PDF)
.
Release 1.0
. pp. 9?11
. Retrieved
March 23,
2009
.
- ^
Lewis, Peter H. (February 11, 1995).
"Performance Systems Buys Pipeline Network"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
March 23,
2009
.
- ^
"Psinet to Sell Consumer Internet Division"
.
The New York Times
. July 2, 1996
. Retrieved
March 23,
2009
.
- ^
"FA ID: NYC98FA047"
.
National Transportation Safety Board
. US Government. Archived from
the original
on 17 October 2014
. Retrieved
12 October
2014
.
- ^
"Untitled (NYC98FA047 crash narrative)"
.
National Transportation Safety Board
. US Government. Archived from
the original
on 17 October 2014
. Retrieved
12 October
2014
.
- ^
Rohde, David (21 December 1997).
"Plane Crash Kills Son of Best-Selling Author"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
"Karen Long on James Gleick's The Information"
. February 7, 2012. Archived from
the original
on July 30, 2013
. Retrieved
May 29,
2014
.
- ^
Banville, John (August 29, 2003).
"The Magus"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
May 29,
2014
.
- ^
Dyson, Freeman J.
(1992). "Review of
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
by James Gleick".
Physics Today
.
45
(11): 87.
doi
:
10.1063/1.2809877
.
ISSN
0031-9228
.
- ^
Bass, Thomas A.
(November 1, 1992).
"Review of
Genius
by James Gleick"
.
The Los Angeles Times
.
- ^
Krantz, Steven G.
(December 2003).
"Review of
Isaac Newton
by James Gleick"
(PDF)
.
Notices of the AMS
.
50
(11): 1404?1406.
- ^
Reisert, Sarah (2017).
"It's about Time"
.
Distillations
.
3
(2): 46?47.
External links
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