The New Celebrity Scientists: Out of the Lab and into the Limelight [Hardcover]

A new cultural icon strode the world stage at the turn of the twenty-first century: the celebrity scientist, as comfortable in Vanity Fair and Vogue as Smithsonian. Declan Fahy profiles eight of these eloquent, controversial, and compelling sellers of science to investigate how they achieved celebrity in the United States and internationallyand explores how their ideas influence our understanding of the world.

Fahy traces the career trajectories of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Stephen Jay Gould, Susan Greenfield, and James Lovelock. He demonstrates how each scientist embraced the power of promotion and popularization to stimulate thinking, impact policy, influence research, drive controversies, and mobilize social movements. He also considers critical claims that they speak beyond their expertise and for personal gain. The result is a fascinating look into how celebrity scientists help determine what it means to be human, the nature of reality, and how to prepare for societys uncertain future.

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 worlds version of movie stars and star athletes. Fahy considers eight well-known contemporary scientists: Stephen Hawking, who inherited Einsteins mantle; evolutionist Richard Dawkins, who carries the banner of militant atheism; James Lovelock, the mavl*