	Marcia Bartusiak: A Brief Biography

Combining her skills as a journalist with an advanced degree in physics, Marcia Bartusiak (pronounced MAR-sha Bar-TOO-shack) has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for more than two decades. Currently, she is a visiting professor with the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bartusiak is the author of Thursday's Universe, a layman's guide to the frontiers of astrophysics and cosmology, and Through a Universe Darkly, a history of astronomers' centuries-long quest to discover the universe's composition, and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, about the on-going attempt to detect gravity waves, the last experimental test of Einstein's theory of general relativity. All three were named notable science books by The New York Times. She also co-authored A Positron Named Priscilla, a National Academy of Sciences book on cutting-edge science. Her latest book is Archives of the Universe, a history of the major discoveries in astronomy told through 100 of the original scientific publications.

Graduating in 1971 with a degree in communications from American University in Washington, D.C., Bartusiak first spent four years as a TV reporter and anchorwoman in Norfolk, Virginia. Assignments at the nearby NASA Langley Research Center sparked a love for science news, which encouraged her to enter Old Dominion University for a master's degree in physics. Her research involved the effects of radiation on materials sent into space as parts of orbiting astronomical observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Ultraviolet Explorer.

Starting her science-writing career as an intern at Science News and then as a charter member of Discover's writing staff, she continues to write about astronomy and physics in a variety of national publications. Her work has appeared in Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Science, Popular Science, World Book Encyclopedia, Smithsonian, Technology Review, and The Sciences. For many years a contributing editor at Discover, she is now on the editorial advisory board of Astronomy magazine. She has also reviewed science books for both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In 2006, Bartusiak was awarded the distinguished Andrew W. Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics. This prize is given annually by the AIP to recognize "significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics." In 1982, she was the first woman to receive the AIP Science Writing Award and won the award again in 2001 for Einstein's Unfinished Symphony. She was also a finalist in NASA's Journalist-in-Space competition. For the 1994-95 academic year, she was a Knight Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for several years following was an Adjunct Professor of Journalism in Boston University's graduate science-writing program.

Marcia Bartusiak lives with her husband, mathematician Stephen Lowe, in Sudbury, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. She is now working on a book about the discovery of the modern universe.