Timothy Ferris: Turning science into masterful stories — from Stephen Hawking to Voyager and beyond

TSTB shares its full interview with acclaimed science writer, editor, and film producer Timothy Ferris. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ferris reflects on his early career with Rolling Stone magazine, his transition to science writing, his friendship with Stephen Hawking -- including his role in developing the physicist's classic "A Brief History of Time" -- his collaboration with Carl Sagan on the Voyager project, and his lifelong passions for stargazing and music.

The author of a dozen books, Ferris has been called “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post. His bestsellers The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way have been translated into fifteen languages and were named by The New York Times as among the leading books of the twentieth century.

A former editor of Rolling Stone magazine, Ferris has published over 200 articles and essays in The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Harper’s, Scientific American, Vanity Fair, and other periodicals. His three PBS documentary films — "The Creation of the Universe," (1986), “Life Beyond Earth” (1999), and “Seeing in the Dark” (2007) — have been seen by over twenty million viewers.

Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft. Now exiting the solar system, the Voyagers are the most distant probes ever created by humans.

Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His works have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

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