Position/Organization: associate professor of journalism, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University

Charles Seife, an associate professor of journalism at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, has been writing about physics and mathematics for a decade and a half. He is the author of five books, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000), which won the 2000 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction; Alpha & Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe (2003); Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, From Our Brains to Black Holes (2005); Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking (2008), which won the 2009 Davis Prize from the History of Science Society; and Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception (2010).

Before arriving at NYU, Seife was a writer for Science magazine and had been a U.S. correspondent for New Scientist. His writing has also appeared in The Economist, Scientific American, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Discover, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and numerous other publications. He has also been a scientific consultant and writer for television documentaries about science and mathematics.

Seife holds an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton University, an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University, and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife Meridith and his daughter Eliza.