Award-winning science writer Ron Cowen has a passion for making complex topics in astronomy, physics and the history of technology clear, exciting and visceral to the general public. He has contributed dozens of articles to magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, Nature, The New York Times, Science, Science News, Scientific American, and US News & World Report.
Ron is also the author of Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes (Harvard Press, 2019), an account of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and the experiments that have confirmed his prediction of the warping of space-time.
Among other honors, Ron has twice won the American Institute of Physics’ excellence in science writing award and three national awards from the American Astronomical Society. After 21 years at Science News, where he won several awards for his reporting in astronomy and physics and broke so many stories he was dubbed “the scoop machine,” Ron is now an independent writer of news and feature articles and has been a guest commentator on National Public Radio’s Science Friday more than a dozen times.
He resides in Silver Spring, Md., a suburb of Washington D.C., with his wife, Cathy, an artist, and daughter Julie. Ron’s other interests include hiking, running, photography and exploring the many facets of Paris and Scotland. He has a passionate interest in wind-up toys from the early 1900s, Edison wax records and phonographs and anything having to do with George Gershwin.
Ron Cowen / Science Writer 