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 referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton, centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of De-extinction#Cloning, cloned dinosaurs. It bega ...

'' 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 Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

and

National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) 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. ...

finalists; and ''The Information'' was awarded the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books in 2012. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Per the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'', "Some writers excel at crafting a historical narrative, others at elucidating esoteric theories, still others at humanizing scientists. Mr. Gleick is a master of all these skills."

Life

A native of

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, Gleick attended

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

, where he was an editor of ''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper at Harvard University, an Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The newspaper was founded in 1873, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduate students. His ...

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

Writing career

He moved to

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

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'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. 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 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. The magazin ...

'' were

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, Strange loop, strange ...

Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould ( ; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American Paleontology, paleontologist, Evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, and History of science, historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely re ...

, 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 phy ...

. His early reporting on

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

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 l ...

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

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

. 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 magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

'', ''

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 ro ...

'', and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', 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 ...

''. His first book, '' Chaos: Making a New Science'', reported the development of the new science of

chaos Chaos or CHAOS may refer to: Science, technology, and astronomy * '' Chaos: Making a New Science'', a 1987 book by James Gleick * Chaos (company), a Bulgarian rendering and simulation software company * ''Chaos'' (genus), a genus of amoebae * ...

and complexity. It made the

butterfly effect In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The term is closely associated w ...

a household term, introduced the

Mandelbrot set The Mandelbrot set () is a two-dimensional set (mathematics), set that is defined in the complex plane as the complex numbers c for which the function f_c(z)=z^2+c does not Stability theory, diverge to infinity when Iteration, iterated starting ...

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 politi ...

( ''Arcadia'') and

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

(''

''). After the publication of ''Chaos'', he collaborated with photographer Eliot Porter on ''Nature's Chaos'' and with developers at

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

on ''Chaos: The Software''. His next books included two biographies, '' Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman'', and ''Isaac Newton''.

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, Literary adaptation, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Marcel Proust, Proust, via Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov", ...

said the latter would "surely stand as the definitive study for a very long time to come." Gleick's writing style has been described as a combination of "clear mind, magpie-styled research and explanatory verve." In 1989–90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. In 2000 he was the first editor of '' The Best American Science Writing'' series. Gleick was elected president of the

Authors Guild The Authors Guild is the United States' 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 coun ...

in 2017.

The Pipeline

As a reaction to poor user experience with procmail configuration at Panix, in 1993 Gleick founded The Pipeline, one of the earliest Internet service providers in New York City. The Pipeline was the first ISP to offer a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

, incorporating e-mail, chat,

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

, and the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

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

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

and then

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

Aircraft accident

On 20 December 1997 Gleick was attempting to land his Rutan Long-EZ experimental plane at Greenwood Lake Airport in West Milford, New Jersey, 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 eight-year-old son, Harry, and left Gleick seriously injured.

Bibliography

Books

Articles

* James Gleick, "The Fate of Free Will" (review of Kevin J. Mitchell, ''Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will'', Princeton University Press, 2023, 333 pp.), ''

'', vol. LXXI, no. 1 (18 January 2024), pp. 27–28, 30. " Agency is what distinguishes us from machines. For biological creatures,

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

and purpose come from acting in the world and experiencing the consequences.

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

s – disembodied, strangers to blood, sweat, and tears – have no occasion for that." (p. 30.) * James Gleick, "The Prophet Business" (review of Glenn Adamson, ''A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present'', Bloomsbury, 2024, 336 pp.), ''

'', vol. LXXII, no. 3 (27 February 2025), pp. 6, 8, 10. " lennAdamson, having exposed... strains of failed

futurology Futures studies, futures research or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will live and wor ...

, suggests nonetheless that we... should continue to make our best guesses... always remembering that every prediction is a statement about the present... For... fourteen years,

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

has included a entry titled 'Timeline of the Far Future'... An editor responsible for one recent addition justified it with the comment, 'Adds a bit of hope.' A different editor deleted it a few seconds later." (p. 10.)

References

External links

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

''.
A Miracle Made Lyrical
Christopher Lydon 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

.
Audio: James Gleick in conversation
with Janna Levin at the Key West Literary Seminar, 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 by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the now defunct ''Boston Phoenix'', '' ...

'', April 6, 2011. *
Time Travel

Gleick on Mastodon
{{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 journalists People from Garrison, New York Writers from New York City American male essayists The Harvard Crimson people Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents