Meet the Authors: Conversations with Best-Selling Science Writers

Richard Besser is ABC News’ chief health and medical editor. In this role, he provides medical analysis and commentary for all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including World News with David Muir, Good Morning America, and Nightline.

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. He studied at Princeton, Cambridge, and Harvard and taught at MIT before moving to Cornell. He is a renowned teacher and one of the world’s most highly cited mathematicians.

Michael Moss is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (Random House, 2013). He has been an investigative reporter with The New York Times since 2000.

Jonathan Weiner’s books have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and many other honors. While working on His Brother’s Keeper, he was writer-in-residence at Rockefeller University. Now he teaches science writing at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism, where he is a professor.

Jessica Wapner is a freelance writer focused mainly on science and medicine. Her first book, The Philadelphia Chromosome, was published in 2013. Publishers Weekly named The Philadelphia Chromosome a top-ten science book for Spring 2013, and Kirkus calls it “an absorbing, complex medical detective story.”

Dr. Mario Livio is an astrophysicist, a best-selling author, and a popular speaker. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published more than 400 scientific papers on topics ranging from Dark Energy and cosmology to black holes and extrasolar planets.

Sarah Elizabeth Richards is a journalist specializing in health, medicine, psychology, and social issues. She has written for more than two dozen newspapers, magazines, and websites.