Johnson, George 1952–

(George Laclede Johnson)

PERSONAL: Born January 20, 1952, in Fayetteville, AR; son of Joseph E. (a physician) and Dorris (a teacher and specialist in early childhood education; maiden name, Matthews) Johnson; married Nancy Maret, September 3, 1994. Education: University of New Mexico, B.A., 1975; American University, M.A., 1979.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., 500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110. E-mail—johnson@nytimes.com; johnson@santafe.edu.

CAREER: Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque, NM, copyeditor, 1976–77, police reporter, 1977–78; Minneapolis Star, Minneapolis, MN, special assignment reporter, 1979–82; New York Times, New York, NY, staff editor for "The Week in Review," 1986–94, contract writer, 1994–.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ape Award for best spot news reporting, Albuquerque Press Club; special achievement award in nonfiction, Los Angeles chapter of International PEN, for Architects of Fear, 1984; Alicia Patterson journalism fellow, 1984; AAAS Science Journalism Award, 1999; Publisher's Award, New York Times, 1991.

WRITINGS:

Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics, J.P. Tarcher (New York, NY), 1984.

Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence, Times Books (New York, NY), 1986.

In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds inside Our Heads, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY) 1995.

Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics (biography), Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

A Shortcut through Time: The Path to a Quantum Computer, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2005.

Work represented in anthologies, including The Best American Science Writing 2000, edited by James Gleick, and Secrets of Angels and Demons, edited by Dan Burstein and Arne de Keijzer; contributor to periodicals, including the Atlantic Monthly, Slate, and Wired.

SIDELIGHTS: George Johnson is a science writer whose books include Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order, in which he explores contemporary science through the geography of New Mexico, where he has made his home, the religion and culture of Native Americans, as well as other cultures, and everyday things and events he uses to demonstrate his observations and theories. The state is also home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which developed the first atomic bomb, and the think tank known as the Santa Fe Institute. Johnson studies chaos theory, quantum mechanics, cosmology, and evolution and Darwinism.

Christopher Badcock wrote in New Statesman & Society that "anyone who has ever tried to write a popular science book of this length will know what a challenge it is, and Johnson rises to it magnificently. He does this by combining popular science with travel writing that also takes in a great deal of local history, religion and folklore." Booklist contributor Donna Seaman wrote that Johnson "excels at making esoteric scientific theories comprehensible."

Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics, called "a masterfully told story" by Albert B. Stewart in the Antioch Review, is Johnson's biography of the American physicist best known for naming the subatomic particles known as quarks. In addition to noting Gell-Mann's achievements, Johnson provides a backdrop for his work, the field of science as it existed at the time, and also delves into the complex scientist's personal life. An Economist reviewer commented that "with Mr. Gell-Mann to spin his story around, Mr. Johnson pulls off an extraordinary feat: he turns the development of modern physics—hardly the most approachable of subjects—into a most exciting read."

In A Shortcut through Time: The Path to a Quantum Computer, Johnson provides a view of the melding of computer theory and quantum physics. Jim Holt reviewed the book for the New York Times Book Review, writing that it "gets across the gist of quantum computing with plenty of charm and no tears. Computer science is hard; quantum mechanics is weird. But Johnson … explains it all with Tinkertoys and clocks and spinning tops and just a little arithmetic. It's a briskly told story, driven entirely by ideas."

Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe is a biography of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who in 1895 was part of a team of women who were employed by the Harvard College Laboratory to count and classify stars. The women, who were called "computers," collected data that would become crucial to the study of astronomy. Johnson notes that Leavitt studied stars based on their brightness and that her work changed the perception of the size of the universe, particularly after she published her findings in 1908, including "the measurements of her North Polar Sequence, ninety-six stars whose magnitude she had determined with such authority and care they could be used as a standard for the rest of the sky." Leavitt had received only brief mentions in previously published material, and this is the first in-depth biography of her work and her life. The woman who went to Harvard in hopes of learning more about the stars but who was given the drudge work of counting them, ultimately made one of the greatest contributions to the knowledge of astronomy.

Simon Singh noted in the New York Times Book Review that Miss Leavitt's Stars "appears in a year when a debate about biases and barriers against women in science has generated enormous public interest, and the argument has spread far beyond the United States. Johnson's book is eloquent evidence in this discussion. He makes clear what Leavitt and her associates accomplished, given a meager opportunity. That says it all."

Johnson told CA: "I pride myself as a generalist, and I believe that there is no subject so complex or profound that it cannot be penetrated by a patient, inquiring mind. As a journalist and author, I choose subjects I believe will help me better understand our remarkable existence. Then I try to render them in a manner that is artful and clear. Good journalism is literature. My inspirations in this regard are American journalist and author Horace Freeland Judson, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Robert A. Caro, and J. Anthony Lucas."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2005.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, spring, 2000, Albert B. Stewart, review of Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics, p. 245.

Booklist, September 1, 1995, Donna Seaman, review of Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order, p. 15; October 15, 1999, Bryce Christensen, review of Strange Beauty, p. 402; February 15, 2003, Gavin Quinn, review of A Shortcut through Time: The Path to a Quantum Computer, p. 1025; May 15, 2005, Rebecca Maksel, review of Miss Leavitt's Stars, p. 1624.

Commonweal, December 15, 1995, Chet Raymo, review of Fire in the Mind, p. 20.

Economist, March 18, 2000, review of Strange Beauty, p. 11; September 24, 2005, review of Miss Leavitt's Stars, p. 98.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2003, review of A Shortcut through Time, p. 127.

Library Journal, March 1, 2003, Joe J. Accardi, review of A Shortcut through Time, p. 110; May 15, 2005, Margaret F. Dominy, review of Miss Leavitt's Stars, p. 139.

New Statesman & Society, March 8, 1996, Christopher Badcock, review of Fire in the Mind, p. 39.

New York Times Book Review, October 5, 1986, Gary Krist, review of Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence, p. 54; February 24, 1991, John C. Marshall, review of In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds inside Our Heads, p. 11; September 24, 1995, Stephen R.L. Clark, review of Fire in the Mind, p. 34; October 17, 1999, Louis A. Bloomfield, review of Strange Beauty, p. 8; April 6, 2003, Jim Holt, review of A Shortcut through Time, p. 12; June 19, 2005, Simon Singh, review of Miss Leavitt's Stars, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of In the Palaces of Memory, p. 37; July 30, 1995, review of Fire in the Mind, p. 62; August 23, 1999, review of Strange Beauty, p. 31; February 10, 2003, review of A Shortcut through Time, p. 177; April 25, 2005, review of Miss Leavitt's Stars, p. 46.

Science, October 22, 1999, Mary K. Gaillard and Laurence A. Marschall, review of Strange Beauty, p. 687.

Sciences, May-June, 1996, John Horgan, review of Fire in the Mind, p. 43; March, 2000, Laurence A. Marschall, review of Strange Beauty, p. 46.

Wilson Quarterly, summer, 1995, review of Fire in the Mind, p. 92.

ONLINE

George Johnson Home Page, http://sciwrite.org/glj (December 15, 2005).