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John Rennie

John Rennie joined Quanta Magazine as deputy editor in 2017. Previously, he spent 20 years at Scientific American, where he served as editor in chief between 1994 and 2009. He created and hosted Hacking the Planet, an original 2013 TV series for The Weather Channel, and has appeared frequently on television and radio on programs such as PBS’s Newshour, ABC’s World News Now, NPR’s Science Friday, the History Channel special Clash of the Cavemen and the Science Channel series Space’s Deepest Secrets. John has also been an adjunct professor of science writing at New York University since 2009. Most recently, he was editorial director of McGraw-Hill Education’s online science encyclopedia AccessScience.

New Clues to Chemical Origins of Metabolism at Dawn of Life

The ingredients for reactions ancestral to metabolism could have formed very easily in the primordial soup, October 2020 work suggests.

October 15, 2020

Nobel Awarded for Lithium-Ion Batteries and Portable Power

John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing lithium-ion batteries, "the hidden workhorses of the mobile era."

October 12, 2019

Nobel Prize Awarded for Cancer Immunotherapy

James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing ways to unleash the immune system more effectively against cancers.

November 1, 2018

Three Biochemists Win Chemistry Nobel for Directing Evolution

By using the power of evolution to solve practical problems, three researchers opened new avenues to chemical discovery.

October 30, 2018

CRISPR Gene-Editing Pioneers Win Kavli Prize for Nanoscience

The inventors of a “Swiss army knife” for genome editing received prestigious honors, as did pioneering scientists in astrophysics and neuroscience.

June 4, 2018

Artificial Neural Nets Grow Brainlike Navigation Cells

Faced with a navigational challenge, neural networks spontaneously evolved units resembling the grid cells that help living animals find their way.

May 14, 2018

Brains Cling to Old Habits When Learning New Tricks

Using a brain-computer interface, scientists are beginning to learn why learning is hard.

March 27, 2018

Evolution Saves Species From “Kill the Winner” Disasters

Modelers find evidence that a combination of competition, predation, and evolution will push ecosystems toward species diversity anywhere in the universe.

February 12, 2018

Supercool Protein Imaging Gets the Nobel Prize

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to researchers who made it possible to see proteins and other biomolecules at an atomic level of detail.

October 4, 2017

Nobel Prize Awarded for Biological Clock Discoveries

Three U.S. biologists share the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their research into the molecular mechanism that drives circadian rhythm.

October 2, 2017

Mini-Brains Go Modular

To create a good living replica of the human brain, your best hope may be to let “organoid” components assemble it for you.

August 9, 2017

Sylvia Earle Is Not Done Exploring

The legendary marine biologist discusses why she’s excited about the coming era of ocean science, the shortsightedness of maritime exploitation and diving in the Arctic in her 80s.

June 8, 2017