Thrilled and honored to announce that Ira Flatow of NPR’s Science Friday just named my book, Gravity’s Century, one of the best summer science books of 2020!
Category Archives: Awards and Honors
2016 American Institute of Physics Science Writing/Articles Award
I’m honored to have received the 2016 AIP Science Writing Award for excellence in science writing on physics and astronomy for my news feature for Nature on how the weirdest property of quantum theory may give birth to geometry, and therefore gravity.
My universe-as-a-hologram story is most read Nature article in 2013
My news story for Nature on new simulations indicating that higher dimensional universes may be holograms of lower dimensional ones, with the same physics, was cited as the most read online news story by Nature readers in 2013, with more than 1.2 million hits so far.
Acoustical Society of America’s Science Writing Awards
I just won the Acoustical Society of America‘s 2011-13 Science Writing Award for two of my recent articles: “Archaeologist of Sound”, which appeared in Science and “The Sounds of the Stars”, which appeared in Nature.
Knight Science Journalism Tracker Recognition for Kepler Coverage
Knight Science Journalism Tracker kindly provided “special kudos” for my Nature News article about the known problems facing Kepler:
SPECIAL KUDOS to this one — Nature News – Ron Cowen: The wheels come off Kepler / Space telescope’s mission to find planets outside the Solar System is probably over ; Great hed, better content with an inquisitor’s tone. First however, it’s gotta be a tad weird being an American writer for Nature. One wonders if Ron, or one of the editors, made sure that the phrase familiar in American English as “checkered history” was rendered into the Brit-speak (ie real English) “chequered history.” But one or the other is what these reaction wheels have, he reports, and attributes it to Borucki who surely wasn’t thinking of the ..’qu..’ version when he said it. This should be the kick-off point for the upcoming and inevitable inquiry and search for lessons learned that may be underway already. Cowen’s list of missions whose engineers went without this kind of reaction wheel, deeming them too unreliable, is long enough to make one wonder. What were they thinking? The answer, to translate Cowen, is that they were thinking they’d better keep their fingers crossed. By the time they recognized the risks the spacecraft was already buttoned up and nearly ready for transport to the launch site.
March 29 – April 25 Off to Harvard astronomy department for one-month fellowship.
March 29-April 25 Off to Harvard astronomy department for one-month fellowship.
American Astronomical Society’s Popular Science Writing Award
I just heard that I earned a 2012 Popular Science Writing Award given annually by the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division. The award was given for an article I wrote in Science News last year about why the sun remains unusually quiet, even near the peak of its 11-year activity cycle. The award’s citation reads:
This review by Mr. Cowen of an ongoing scientific debate about possible underlying causes of fluctuations in solar cycles is accurate and informative while remaining succinct and educational.
Off to Harvard for a Stay as Visiting Journalist at the Center for Astrophysics
Ron is a visiting journalist at Harvard from April 23 to May 18, 2012. He’ll be a guest at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Institute for Theory and Computation, attending seminars and lectures and chatting with scientists at both Harvard and MIT. Hope to come back with several cool stories so stay tuned!