Natalie Angier

Natalie Angier
Born (1958-02-16) February 16, 1958 (age 66)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationScience writer
EmployerThe New York Times
Known forScience articles and books
Notable workWoman: An Intimate Geography, 1999;
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, 2007
SpouseRick Weiss
ChildrenKatherine Weiss Angier
Parents
  • Keith Angier (father)
  • Adele Angier, née Rosenthal (mother)
AwardsPulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting, 1991

Natalie Angier /ænˈdʒɪər/[1] (born February 16, 1958[2] in the Bronx,[3] New York City) is an American nonfiction writer and a science journalist for The New York Times.[2] Her awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting in 1991[2] and the AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award in 1992.[4] She is also noted for her public identification as an atheist and received the Freedom from Religion Foundation's Emperor Has No Clothes Award in 2003.[5]

Early life

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Angier was born in the Bronx,[3] New York City, on February 16, 1958, to Keith Angier and Adele Angier, née Rosenthal.[6] She was raised in the Bronx and New Buffalo, Michigan.[7]

Education

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Angier began her college studies at age 16 at the University of Michigan.[3] After completing two years at the University of Michigan, she studied English, physics, and astronomy at Barnard College, where she graduated magna cum laude[6] in 1978.[2] She also studied medieval literature, post graduation.[3]

Career

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Angier began her writing career as a technical writer for Texas Instruments.[3] She was then hired as a founding staff member of Discover Magazine in 1980 and largely wrote about evolutionary biology and animal behavior during her four years there.[3][8] After Discover, she worked as a senior science writer for Time Magazine; as an editor at the women's magazine, Savvy (now defunct); and as a professor at the New York University's Graduate Program in Science and Environmental Reporting.[7]

In 1990, Angier joined The New York Times as a science writer and remains on staff.[7] She won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting in 1991[7] and the AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award in 1992.,[4] among many other awards detailed in the Awards and honors section below.

Her writing has appeared in print and on-line magazines: The American Scholar, The Atlantic, GEO, National Geographic, O magazine, Parade, Slate, Smithsonian, Washington Monthly, among others.[7] Angier's books and anthology contributions are detailed in the Books section below.

Angier is a voting member of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary.[7][9]

Philosophical views

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Angier first publicly described herself as an atheist in 2001:[5]

So, I'll out myself. I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection.

— Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist", New York Times Sunday Magazine (January 14, 2001)[10]

This, in part, is why Angier was presented with the Freedom from Religion Foundation's Emperor Has No Clothes Award in 2003.[11]

Personal life

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Angier married Rick Weiss on July 27, 1991.[12] Rick Weiss is a former science reporter for The Washington Post.[13] Angier and Weiss live in Takoma Park, Maryland[11] and have a daughter, Katherine Weiss Angier,[8] who graduated summa cum laude in 2018 from Princeton with a degree in Biology.[14]

Awards and honors

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Books

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  • Author: Natural Obsessions: Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell, 1988, ISBN 0395924723 1999 Paperback
  • Contributor: New Science Journalists, 1995, ISBN 0345383656 Paperback
  • Author: The Beauty of the Beastly: New Views on the Nature of Life, 1995, ISBN 0395791472 1996 Paperback
  • Author: Woman: An Intimate Geography, 1999, ISBN 0544228103 2014 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Best American Science Writing 2000, 2000, ISBN 0060957360 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Best American Science Writing 2001, 2001, ISBN 0060936487 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Best American Science Writing 2002, 2002, ISBN 0060936509 Paperback
  • Editor: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002, 2002, ISBN 0618134786 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, 2002, ISBN 0060936460 Paperback
  • Contributor: When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories, 2002, ISBN 155652448X Hardcover
  • Contributor: Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, 2003, ISBN 0743466276 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Best American Science Writing 2003, 2003, ISBN 0060936517 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Best American Science Writing 2005, 2005, ISBN 0060726423 Paperback
  • Contributor: The Best American Science Writing 2005, 2005, ISBN 0060726423 Paperback
  • Contributor: Axelrod & Cooper's Concise Guide to Writing, 4th Edition, 2006, ISBN 0312434391 Paperback
  • Author: The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, 2007, ISBN 0547053460 Paperback
  • Editor: The Best American Science Writing 2009, 2009, ISBN 9780061431661 Paperback
  • Author: Woman: An Intimate Geography, Revised and Updated Edition, 2014, ISBN 1844089908 Paperback

Articles

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  • Author: "Not Milk?" (review of Anne Mendelson, Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood, Columbia University Press, 2023, 396 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXX, no. 16 (19 October 2023), pp. 36, 38–39. "[Americans'] consumption of cow's milk [...] peak[ed in] 1945, when [they] drank an average of forty-five gallons apiece. By 2001 the nation's per capita milk intake had been cut in half, to twenty-three gallons, and in 2021 the figure was down to just sixteen gallons of milk per person, or 5.6 ounces a day... Leading the... drop-off are members of Generation Z: people born after 1996... Among the eco-conscious, antipathy toward dairy milk is great enough that some high-end coffee shops feel no obligation to offer it at all." (p. 36.)
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References

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  1. ^ "New York Times science writer Natalie Angier talks about her new book Woman: An Intimate Geog...". NPR. March 24, 1999. Archived from the original on January 22, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Natalie Angier: Pulitzer prize winning science writer for The New York Times". Edge.org. Edge Foundation, Inc. Archived from the original on September 8, 2016. Retrieved September 8, 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Darby, Ann (March 22, 1999). "Natalie Angier: The Science Of Being Female". Publishers Weekly. PWxyz, LLC. Archived from the original on January 24, 2019. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
  4. ^ a b "AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award – Newspapers (> 100,000 daily circulation)". AAAS. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Archived from the original on April 15, 2014. Retrieved April 15, 2014.
  5. ^ a b "Natalie Angier". Freedom From Religion Foundation. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 23, 2019.
  6. ^ a b Brennan, Elizabeth; Clarage, Elizabeth (1999). Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Phonenix, Arizona: The Oryx Press. ISBN 1-57356-111-8. Retrieved January 30, 2019.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Natalie Angier". New York Times. See "More" link on page or page's source code for referenced information. Archived from the original on December 8, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  8. ^ a b c "Natalie Angier". The Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop. Archived from the original on September 2, 2018. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
  9. ^ a b "(untitled)". The American Heritage Dictionairy of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Archived from the original on November 2, 2017. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  10. ^ "Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations: Al-Aq". Positive Atheism. Cliff Walker. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
  11. ^ a b c "Emperor Has No Clothes Award: But What About the Tooth Fairy, Mom? Raising a Healthy God-free Child in a Hopelessly God-struck Nation". FFRF. Freedom From Religion Foundation. November 2003. Archived from the original on April 30, 2016. Retrieved April 30, 2016.
  12. ^ Angier, Natalie (July 30, 2018). "Little-known tradition, because I just made it up: When your anniversary day and the number of years you've been married coincide--e.g., 27 years on July 27-- you're supposed to go trekking with llamas". Twitter. Archived from the original on January 28, 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  13. ^ Weiss, Rick (July 20, 2008). "What You Should Know Before You Spit Into That Test Tube". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 10, 2015. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  14. ^ Angier, Natalie (June 1, 2018). "We just learned that our hardworking daughter Katherine will graduate Princeton next week in biology--summa cum laude!". Twitter. Archived from the original on January 28, 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  15. ^ "Christmas Books; Notable Books of the Year". New York Times. December 4, 1988. p. 13. Archived from the original on May 25, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2015.
  16. ^ "1992 Large Newspaper". Science Journalism Awards. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Archived from the original on January 28, 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  17. ^ "Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier". Library Thing. Archived from the original on December 29, 2014. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
  18. ^ "All Professors at Large: 1965 to June 30, 2023". Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large - Cornell University. Archived from the original on June 15, 2018. Retrieved June 15, 2018.
  19. ^ Bupp, Nathan (August 4, 2008). "CSI's Robert P. Balles Award Goes to New York Times Science Writer Natalie Angier". Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on January 6, 2018. Retrieved January 6, 2018.
  20. ^ a b c "The Canon by Natalie Angier". Library Thing. Archived from the original on December 23, 2015. Retrieved December 23, 2015.
  21. ^ "Congratulations to the Class of 2009". Jay Connected. Washington & Jefferson College, Office of Alumni Relations. Archived from the original on January 29, 2019. Retrieved January 29, 2019.