Natalie Wolchover

Natalie Ann Wolchover (born October 16, 1986) is a science journalist.^[1] She is a senior writer and editor for Quanta Magazine, and has been involved with Quanta's development since its inception in 2013.^[1][2] In 2022 she won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.^[3]

Early life

Wolchover was born in London, England and later moved to Blanco, Texas.^[4]

Writing career

Wolchover began her career freelancing for Make magazine and Seed, then worked as an intern for Science Illustrated.^[5] She then became a staff writer for Life's Little Mysteries where she answered science questions, debunked paranormal claims and fake videos and wrote about new research.^[5]

Wolchover has written for publications including Quanta Magazine, Nature, The New Yorker, Popular Science, and LiveScience.^[6][7][1] Her articles are often syndicated to sites such as Wired, Business Insider, Nautilus, and The Atlantic.^[8][9]

Awards judges have recognized Wolchover's ability to communicate complex ideas such as Bayesian statistics to a general audience.^[10]

Selected writing

Wolchover writes on topics within the physical sciences, such as high-energy physics, particle physics, AdS/CFT, quantum computing, gravitational waves, astrophysics, climate change, and Gödel's incompleteness theorems.^{[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][excessive citations]} Notable interviews include the highly cited theorists in high energy physics Ed Witten, Lisa Randall, Eva Silverstein, Juan Maldecena, Joe Polchinski, and Nima Arkani-Hamed.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][excessive citations]}

Education

Wolchover obtained a bachelor's degree in physics from Tufts University, during which time she co-authored several publications in non-linear optics.^[27][1] In 2009, Wolchover went on to study graduate-level physics at the University of California, Berkeley.^[1][2] She left graduate school during the first year in order to pursue a career in science journalism.^[1]

Awards and honors

• 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting^[3]
• 2017 Science Communication Award, American Institute of Physics.^[28]
• 2017 Director's Visitor, Institute for Advanced Study.^[29]
• 2016 Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award, American Statistical Association.^[30][31]
• 2016 Evert Clark / Seth Payne Award, Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.^[30][10]
• Writing featured in The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015.^[30]

Personal life

Wolchover lives in Brooklyn, New York with her wife.^[30]

References

1. "Natalie Wolchover". Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
2. "Natalie Wolchover | Quanta Magazine". www.quantamagazine.org. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
3. @pulitzerprizes (9 May 2022). "Register" (Tweet). Retrieved 9 May 2022 – via Twitter.
4. Marzjarani, Morteza (August 2016). "ESRA Award Winner Talks Physics and Statistics". magazine.amstat.org.
5. Zivkovic, Bora. "Introducing: Natalie Wolchover". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
6. Wolchover, Natalie (20 March 2018). "A trek through the probable universe". Nature. 555 (7697): 440–441. Bibcode:2018Natur.555..440W. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-03272-8. PMID 32034337.
7. Wolchover, Natalie (19 February 2019). "A Different Kind of Theory of Everything". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
8. "Natalie Wolchover". www.wired.com. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
9. "Natalie Wolchover". Business Insider. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
10. "Natalie Wolchover". National Press Foundation. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
11. "Frontier of Physics: Interactive Map". Quanta Magazine. 3 August 2015. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
12. Wolchover, Natalie (11 June 2018). "Evidence Found for a New Fundamental Particle". Nautilus. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
13. Wolchover, Natalie (4 March 2019). "The Physics Still Hiding in the Higgs Boson". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
14. Wolchover, Natalie (21 February 2019). "How Our Universe Could Emerge as a Hologram". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
15. Wolchover, Natalie (3 January 2019). "How Space and Time Could Be a Quantum Error-Correcting Code". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
16. "Studies Rescue LIGO's Gravitational-Wave Signal From the Noise". Quanta Magazine. 13 December 2018. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
17. "Priyamvada Natarajan Maps the Invisible Universe". Quanta Magazine. 4 February 2019. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
18. Wolchover, Natalie (25 February 2019). "A World Without Clouds". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
19. Wolchover, Natalie (14 July 2020). "How Gödel's Proof Works". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
20. "Edward Witten Ponders the Nature of Reality". Quanta Magazine. 28 November 2017. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
21. Wolchover, Natalie (12 April 2016). "Debate Intensifies Over Dark Disk Theory". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
22. Wolchover, Natalie (17 July 2017). "Eva Silverstein's Spirals and Strings". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
23. Wolchover, Natalie (23 June 2017). "Juan Maldacena, Pondering Quantum Gravity by the Pond". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
24. authors, Natalie Wolchover +2 (7 August 2017). "Joe Polchinski's Restless Pursuit of Quantum Gravity". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 14 March 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
25. "Nima Arkani-Hamed and the Future of Physics". Quanta Magazine. 22 September 2015. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
26. "Natalie Wolchover". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
27. "Natalie Wolchover, A'08 | Physics and Astronomy". as.tufts.edu. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
28. "Natalie Wolchover". www.aip.org. 20 October 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
29. "Natalie Wolchover". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
30. "Natalie Wolchover". World Science Festival. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
31. Talley, Jill (31 July 2016). "ASA Presents Physical Sciences Writer Natalie Wolchover with 2016 Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award" (PDF). ASA News. American Statistical Association.

External links

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Natalie Wolchover.

• An Interview with Natalie Wolchover, Council for the Advancement of Science Writing
• Science Reporting in the Age of Sound Bites, Seminar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics