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Claudia Dreifus

Lecturer; Contributor to The New York Times

Claudia Dreifus, an instructor in Columbia's M.S. in Sustainability Management program, is one of the world's leading science interviewers.

For 20 years, she's been producing the "Conversation with..." feature in The New York Times Tuesday Science section, soliciting answers from Nobel Prize winners and breakthrough figures. She also writes for the The New York Review of Books, Quanta, Smithsonian, The Nation and The Chronicle of Higher Education

Her popular class, "Writing About Global Science for the International Media," was one of the first courses in the country aimed at teaching scientists journalism skills.  Many of her former students have published in popular media.    

When the scientific honor society, Sigma Xi, made her an honorary member, it was because she had "transformed" science journalism with her style of personal and accessible science journalism.

Professor Dreifus is the author of six books. The last, Higher Education?, was co-authored with her husband, the political scientist Andrew Hacker.

Education

  • B.S., New York University 

Publications

  • Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from the New York Times (Times Books, 2002)
  • Interview (Seven Stories Press, 1999)