Marcia Bartusiak

Marcia F. Bartusiak is an author, journalist, and Professor of the Practice of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She writes about the fields of astronomy and physics. Marcia has been published in National Geographic, Discover, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Science, Popular Science, World Book Encyclopedia, Smithsonian, and MIT Technology Review. She is a regular contributor to Natural History magazine. Bartusiak has twice won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award - in 2001 for Einstein's Unfinished Symphony and in 1982 for "The Ultimate Timepiece" in Discover Magazine.
She won the 2006 American Institute of Physics Andrew W. Gemant Award. "The Andrew Gemant Award recognizes the accomplishments of a person who has made significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics given annually." Her latest book is Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved. Bartusiak is also the author of Thursday's Universe, a layman's guide to the frontiers of astrophysics and cosmology, Through a Universe Darkly, a history of astronomers' centuries-long quest to discover the universe's composition, and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, about the ongoing attempt to detect gravity waves, the last experimental test of Einstein's theory of general relativity. All three were named notable science books by The New York Times. More recently published are The Day We Found the Universe, a narrative saga of the birth of modern cosmology and the 2010 winner of the History of Science Society's Davis Prize (this prize recognizes books in the history of science directed to a wide public audience), and Archives of the Universe, a history of the major discoveries in astronomy told through 100 of the original scientific publications.