Tom Siegfried

Tom Siegfried

Contributing Correspondent

Tom Siegfried is a contributing correspondent. He was editor in chief of Science News from 2007 to 2012, and he was the managing editor from 2014 to 2017. He is the author of the blog Context. In addition to Science News, his work has appeared in Science, Nature, Astronomy, New Scientist and Smithsonian. Previously he was the science editor of The Dallas Morning News. He is the author of four books: The Bit and the Pendulum (Wiley, 2000); Strange Matters (National Academy of Sciences’ Joseph Henry Press, 2002);  A Beautiful Math (2006, Joseph Henry Press); and The Number of the Heavens (Harvard University Press, 2019). Tom was born in Lakewood, Ohio, and grew up in nearby Avon. He earned an undergraduate degree from Texas Christian University with majors in journalism, chemistry and history, and has a master of arts with a major in journalism and a minor in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. His awards include the American Geophysical Union's Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism, the Science-in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse Award, the American Chemical Society’s James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, and the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award.

All Stories by Tom Siegfried

  1. Neuroscience

    When evaluating textbook dogmas about the brain, keep an open mind

    When evaluating textbook dogmas about the brain, keep an open mind.

  2. Particle Physics

    Higgs hysteria

    While some of the hype around the boson’s discovery was exaggerated, many aspects of the Higgs’ real value to science and society went un- or understated.

  3. Particle Physics

    Nature’s secrets foretold

    After decades of searching, it seems scientists have found the elusive Higgs boson.

  4. Particle Physics

    A primer on the long-sought Higgs boson

    Discovering the Higgs boson is cause for celebration — and for explanation, of what the particle is and why it matters.

  5. Humans

    BLOG: Humans’ not-so singular status

    Reporting from the Euroscience Open Forum in Dublin, editor in chief Tom Siegfried discusses how neuroscience and artificial intelligence research are challenging ideas of selfhood and humankind's specialness.

  6. Physics

    With discovery of the Higgs, science can celebrate math’s power to probe nature

  7. Physics

    Essay: Nature’s secrets foretold

    Higgs discovery celebrates math's power to make predictions about the real world.

  8. Physics

    Bubble universes give new perspective to time’s origin and its arrow

  9. Math

    A Mind from Math

    Alan Turing, often considered the father of computer science, was born a century ago, in June of 1912. He foresaw machines’ potential to mimic brains.

  10. Physics

    Lessons from physics help reveal evidence for the body ferroelectric

  11. Physics

    Computers’ inability to find physical laws is a clue to math’s relationship to reality

  12. Physics

    Time’s arrow and reality’s randomness succumb to quantum thermodynamics