James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called "one of the great science writers of all time". He is part of the inspiration for

Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 when ...

character Ian Malcolm. Gleick's books include the international bestsellers '' Chaos: Making a New Science'' (1987) and '' The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood'' (2011). Three of his books have been

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

and

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

finalists; and ''The Information'' was awarded the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012 and the

Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and ...

2012. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.

Biography

A native of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, Gleick attended

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...

, where he was an editor of ''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...

'', graduating in 1976 with an A.B. degree in English and linguistics. He moved to

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origin ...

and helped found an alternative weekly newspaper, ''Metropolis''. After its demise a year later, he returned to New York and in 1979 joined the staff of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. He worked there for ten years as an editor on the metropolitan desk and then as a science reporter. Among the scientists Gleick profiled in the ''

New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

'' were

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, a ...

Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Goul ...

, Mitchell Feigenbaum, and

Benoit Mandelbrot Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of p ...

. His early reporting on

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

anticipated the

antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust ...

investigations by the U. S. Department of Justice and the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

. He wrote the "Fast Forward" column in the ''New York Times Magazine'' from 1995 to 1999, and his essays charting the growth of the Internet formed the basis of his book ''What Just Happened''. His work has also appeared in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', ''

the Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

'', and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', and he is a regular contributor to ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

''. His first book, '' Chaos: Making a New Science'', reported the development of the new science of chaos and complexity. It made the Butterfly Effect a household term, introduced the

Mandelbrot Set The Mandelbrot set () is the set of complex numbers c for which the function f_c(z)=z^2+c does not diverge to infinity when iterated from z=0, i.e., for which the sequence f_c(0), f_c(f_c(0)), etc., remains bounded in absolute value. This ...

and fractal geometry to a broad audience, and sparked popular interest in the subject, influencing such diverse writers as

Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and polit ...

('' Arcadia'') and

Michael Crichton John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature tech ...

(''

'').

The Pipeline

In 1993, Gleick founded one of the earliest Internet service providers, The Pipeline, in New York City, as a reaction to poor user experience with

procmail procmail is an email server software component — specifically, a message delivery agent (MDA). It was one of the earliest mail filter programs. It is typically used in Unix-like mail systems, using the mbox and Maildir storage formats. pr ...

configuration at Panix. It was the first ISP to offer a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

, incorporating e-mail, chat,

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

, and the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

, through software for Windows and Mac operating systems. The software, created by Gleick's business partner, Uday Ivatury, was licensed to other Internet service providers in the United States and overseas. Gleick sold The Pipeline in 1995 to PSINet, and it was later absorbed into MindSpring and then

EarthLink EarthLink is an American Internet service provider. It went public on NASDAQ in January 1997. Much of the company's growth was via acquisition; by 2000, ''The New York Times'' described Earthlink as the "second largest Internet service provider ...

Aircraft accident

On December 20, 1997, Gleick was attempting to land his Rutan Long-EZ experimental plane at

Greenwood Lake Airport Greenwood Lake Airport is a public use airport located one nautical mile (2 km) east of the central business district of West Milford, in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. The airport is owned by New Jersey Department of Tran ...

West Milford, New Jersey West Milford is a township in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 25,850, reflecting a decline of 560 (−2.1%) from the 26,410 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in ...

, when a build-up of ice in the engine's carburetor caused the aircraft engine to lose power and the plane landed short of the runway into rising terrain. The impact killed Gleick's adopted eight-year-old son, Harry, and left Gleick seriously injured.

Work

Gleick's writing style has been described as a combination of "clear mind, magpie-styled research and explanatory verve." After the publication of ''Chaos'', Gleick collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on ''Nature's Chaos'' and with developers at

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...

on ''Chaos: The Software''. He was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1989–90. He was the first editor of '' The Best American Science Writing'' series. His next books included two biographies, ''Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman'', and ''Isaac Newton'', which

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry J ...

said would "surely stand as the definitive study for a very long time to come." Gleick was elected president of the

Authors Guild The Authors Guild is America's oldest and largest professional organization for writers and provides advocacy on issues of free expression and copyright protection. Since its founding in 1912 as the Authors League of America, it has counted among ...

in 2017.

Bibliography

References

External links

James Gleick's website
with selections of his work.
James Gleick
author page in ''

''.
A Miracle Made Lyrical

Christopher Lydon Christopher Lydon (born 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American media personality and author. He was the original host of '' The Connection'', produced by WBUR and syndicated to other NPR stations, and created '' Open Source'', a weekly ra ...

interview with James Gleick.
The Narrative Thread
James Gleick talks with Robert Birnbaum on ''Identity Theory'' (webzine).
Leave Cyberspace, Meet in Egypt
article on the culture of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

.
Audio: James Gleick in conversation
with Janna Levin at the

Key West Literary Seminar The Key West Literary Seminar is a writers' conference and festival held each January in Key West, Florida. It draws an international audience for readings, panel discussions, and workshops. History The Seminar was founded in 1983 by David Kaufel ...

, 2008.
'Science writer James Gleick explains the physics that define new media in the ongoing communications revolution' by Peter Kadzis
interview in the ''

Boston Phoenix ''The Phoenix'' (stylized as ''The Phœnix'') was the name of several alternative weekly periodicals published in the United States of America by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the ''Portland Phoenix'' and ...

'', April 6, 2011. *
Time Travel

Gleick on Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gleick, James 1954 births Living people Harvard College alumni American science writers American biographers American male biographers American male journalists American science journalists American essayists The New York Times columnists The New York Times writers People from Garrison, New York Writers from New York City American male essayists The Harvard Crimson people Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents