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. Science & Society

    Happy Birthday to Boole, with 11001000 binary candles

    George Boole’s 200th birthday is occasion to celebrate the 1s and 0s of computer language.

  2. Science & Society

    Unreliable science impairs its ability to serve society

    Science’s reproducibility problem impairs the ability of basic research to inform the search for better medicinal drugs.

  3. Quantum Physics

    Quantum interpretations feel the heat

    Landauer’s principle shows a way to test competing interpretations about quantum physics.

  4. Science & Society

    Special Report: Gravity’s Century

    After years of pondering the interplay of space, time, matter and gravity, Einstein produced, in a single month, an utter transformation of science’s conception of the cosmos: the general theory of relativity.

  5. Particle Physics

    Top 10 subatomic surprises

    Nobel Prize–winning neutrinos rank among science’s most unexpected discoveries.

  6. Science & Society

    Centennial books illuminate Einstein’s greatest triumph

    Scholars mark general relativity 100ths anniversary with books on history, biography, science.

  7. Astronomy

    Einstein’s genius changed science’s perception of gravity

    Einstein struggled for years to solve the puzzle of general relativity. The pieces all fell into place in November 1915.

  8. Science & Society

    The amateur who helped Einstein see the light

    With help from Science News Letter, eccentric amateur Rudi Mandl persuaded Einstein to explore the phenomenon of gravitational lensing.

  9. Math

    Evidence-based medicine lacks solid supporting evidence

    Saving science from its statistical flaws will require radical revision in its methods

  10. Physics

    Nobel laureate finds beauty in science and science in beauty

    In ‘A Beautiful Question,’ Frank Wilczek explores links between math and art

  11. Science & Society

    How English became science’s lingua franca

    A new book explores the roles of war, politics and economics in the rise of English in scientific communication.

  12. Math

    Top 10 ways to save science from its statistical self

    Saving science from its statistical flaws will require radical revision in its methods.