New Celebrity Scientists

Declan Fahy is currently lecturer in the School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland. Before joining academia, he worked for nearly a decade as a professional reporter and features writer for newspapers including The Irish Times.His recent journalism appears at the Columbia Journalism Review online and The Scientist.

A former reporter, Fahy understands how electronic media shape public perception of all aspects of society. This includes science, for which media have created a new breed of scientist, ‘celebrity scientists’ who are in the public eye by dint of popular books, television, and/or newsprint. These individuals are the scientific world’s version of movie stars and star athletes. Fahy considers eight well-known contemporary scientists: Stephen Hawking, who inherited Einstein’s mantle; evolutionist Richard Dawkins, who carries the banner of militant atheism; James Lovelock, the maverick outsider who proposed the Gaia hypothesis; and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has replaced Carl Sagan as television’s go-to science expert. Others include cosmologist Brian Greene; the Baroness Susan Greenfield, who studies Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease; the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, and psychologist Stephen Pinker. This interesting book covers the work and life of each in some depth, and extensive chapter notes direct those who wish to delve more deeply into their lives. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.

• Acknowledgments1—A Brief History of Scientific Celebrity2—The Paradoxical Fame of Stephen Hawking3—Richard Dawkins’s Image Problem4—Steven Pinker’s Academic Stardom5—The Political Celebrity of Stephen Jay Gould6—Fame and the Female Scientist—Susan Greenfield7—The Reluctant Fame of James Lovelock8—The Charming Stardom of Brian Greene9—Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Star Quality10—A New Scientific EliteNotesIndexAbout the Author