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Charles Seife

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Seife is an American author, journalist, and professor at New York University. He has written extensively on scientific and mathematical topics.

Career

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Seife holds a mathematics degree from Princeton University (1993), [1] an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.[2]

Seife wrote for Science magazine and New Scientist before joining the Department of Journalism at New York University where he became a professor. [2]

Books

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His first and best-known published book is Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000).[3]

Another well-known book from Seife is Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled By the Numbers (Penguin, 2010).[4] Here, Seife focuses on how much propaganda uses numbers worded in such a way that they confuse people and can be misinterpreted.[5]

Other books by Seife are:

  • Alpha & Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe, Penguin Putnam, 2003. ISBN 0-670-03179-8
  • Decoding the Universe, Penguin, 2007. ISBN 978-0-14-303839-9
  • Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking, Viking, 2008. ISBN 978-0-670-02033-1[6]
  • Virtual Unreality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Penguin Putnam, 2014. ISBN 0-670-02608-5[7]
  • Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity, Basic Books, 2021. ISBN 9781541618374[8]

Other writing

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Seife's freelance work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Scientific American, and The Economist, among others.[2] Throughout his career, he has written many book reviews, especially of books which focus on mathematics.

Professional associations

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Seife is a member of PEN, the National Association of Science Writers, and the D.C. Science Writers Association.[citation needed]

Awards

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  • 2001 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction for Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

References

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  1. ^ Greenwood, Katherine Federici (13 October 2010). Numbers can mislead - Charles Seife ’93 reveals mischief behind data, Princeton Alumni Weekly
  2. ^ a b c Journalism at NYU - Faculty Archived April 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Seife, Charles (2000). Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140296471.
  4. ^ Seife, Charles (2010). Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled by the Numbers. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-312007-0.
  5. ^ Steven Strogatz, Fibbing With Numbers, The New York Times, 17 September 2010
  6. ^ Seife, Charles (2008). Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. Penguin. ISBN 9780670020331.
  7. ^ Seife, Charles (2015-08-04). Virtual Unreality: The New Era of Digital Deception. Penguin. ISBN 9780143127673; pbk{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  8. ^ Seife, Charles (2021). Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-5416-1837-4.
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