Carl Zimmer


Carl Zimmer is an American popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times, Discover, and National Geographic. He is a fellow at Yale University's Morse College and adjunct professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. Zimmer also gives frequent lectures and has appeared on many radio shows, including National Public Radio's Radiolab, Fresh Air, and This American Life. He authored Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, a companion piece to the PBS series Evolution.
Zimmer describes his journalistic beat as "life" or "what it means to be alive". He is the only science writer to have a species of tapeworm named after him. Zimmer's father is Dick Zimmer, a Republican politician from New Jersey, who was a member of U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1997.
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Early life and education

Born to an Ashkenazi Jewish father and a mother of Irish and German descent, after his childhood in Connecticut, Zimmer received a [Bachelor of Arts|B.A.] in English from Yale University in 1987.

Career

In 1989, Zimmer began his career at Discover magazine, first as a copy editor and fact checker, eventually serving as a senior editor from 1994 to 1998. Zimmer left Discover after ten years to focus on books and other projects. In 2004, he started a blog called "The Loom", in which he wrote about topics related to his books, but later expanded it into what he terms "a place where I could write about things I might not be turning into an article for a magazine, but were really interesting'. The Loom has been hosted by Discover and National Geographic for many years, and has been invited to be part of Scienceblogs. It was transferred to Zimmer's personal website in 2018. Zimmer writes a weekly column called "Matter" in The New York Times. Zimmer and the STAT team have put out "Game of Genomes", a 13-part series that enlisted two dozen scientists, with the goal of exploring Zimmer's own genome.
He has given lectures at universities, medical schools, and museums. In 2009, Zimmer was the keynote speaker at Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism. He also presented at NECSS 2011 and CSICon 2018. Zimmer has twice been a spotlight speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in 2017 and 2018. In 2009 and 2010 he was host of the periodic audio podcast "Meet the Scientist" of the American Society for Microbiology. Zimmer's 2004 article "Whose Life Would You Save?" was included in the 2005 The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.
Zimmer has received a number of awards, including the 2007 National Academies Communication Award, a prize for science communication from the United States National Academy of Sciences, for his wide-ranging coverage of biology and evolution in newspapers, magazines, and his blog. In 2016 Yale University appointed Zimmer Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, stating that he is "a world-renowned science journalist and teacher, and his ability to make science, particularly biology, accessible to the general public is without peer". Zimmer has taught a science communication course at Yale since 2017 and participates in other molecular biophysics and biochemistry courses.

Fellowships

Honors

Books

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life London : William Heinemann Ltd., 2008 The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution. Roberts, 2009, Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through the Mind. Independent Publishers Group, 2010, More Brain Cuttings: Further Explorations of the Mind. New York : Scott & Nix, Inc., 2011 A Planet of Viruses Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. Reprint. Sterling: New York, 2014. A Planet of Viruses. 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2015. Evolution: Making Sense of Life. co-authored with Douglas Emlen. Roberts and Company; Greenwood Village, Colorado, 2016 She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. Dutton: New York, New York, 2018 Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive New York: Dutton, 2021.Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe New York: Dutton, 2025.

Essays and chapters

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Critical studies and reviews of Zimmer's work

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