Presenters

Thomas Levenson

Thomas Levenson is an associate professor of science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of books on science, technology, and history, including the widely acclaimed biography Einstein in Berlin (Bantam, 2003). Einstein in Berlin focuses on the 18 years, from 1914 through 1932, that the Einstein spent in Germany between the two world wars�a span that mirrored the entire 20th century in its swings from periods of great hope to calamitous strife. Levenson's narrative tells the story of how a former patent clerk became the greatest scientist of the modern era.

Levenson, who earned an A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1980, has written two previous books� Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science (Touchstone, 1995) and Ice Time: Climate, Science, and Life on Earth (Harpercollins, 1989)�and numerous articles on subjects ranging from the science of Stradivari violins to the personal consequences of a total eclipse of the sun.

Levenson is also a Peabody and Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker. He has produced nine prime-time science documentaries, including the 1997 PBS Nova film "Eclipse of the Century," which explores scientists' efforts to study the 1991 total eclipse of the sun; "Building Big Domes," part of the PBS Building Big series based on the books by David Macaulay; and the 1996 PBS Nova biography "Einstein Revealed," a two-hour documentary offering a penetrating profile of the scientist using dramatized interviews, historical photography, and computer animation to illuminate Einstein's personal life and his lifelong quest to understand nature. In 1992 Levenson's television work was honored with an AAAS-Westinghouse Science Journalism Award. He won the 2005 National Academies Communications Prize in the television category for his film "Origins: Back to the Beginning," broadcast on NOVA in 2004.