honorees

Public Understanding of Science Award

Ira Flatow
Host, National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday
and President and Founder, TalkingScience

Veteran National Public Radio (NPR) science correspondent and award-winning television journalist Ira Flatow is the host of Talk Of The Nation: Science Friday. He anchors the show each Friday, bringing radio and Internet listeners worldwide a lively, informative discussion on science, technology, health, space, and the environment. Flatow also is Founder and President of TalkingScience, a new nonprofit company dedicated to creating radio, television, and Internet projects that make science user-friendly.

Flatow’s interest in things scientific began in boyhood: He almost burned down his mother’s bathroom trying to recreate a biology class experiment. “I was the proverbial kid who spent hours in the basement experimenting with electronic gizmos, and then entering them in high school science fairs,” Flatow says. Mixing his passion for science with a tendency to be “a bit of a ham,” Flatow describes his work as the challenge “to make science and technology a topic for discussion around the dinner table.”

He has shared his enthusiasm for science with public radio listeners for more than 35 years. As a reporter and then News Director at WBFO-FM/Buffalo, New York, Flatow began reporting at the station while studying for his engineering degree at the State University of New York in Buffalo. As NPR’s science correspondent from 1971 to 1986, Flatow found himself reporting from the Kennedy Space Center, Three Mile Island, Antarctica, and the South Pole. Flatow currently serves as Executive Producer of Science Friday,now in its fifteenth year.

He is at work on a new book that will include some of his Science Fridayinterviews with especially well-known scientists, including Oliver Sacks, Jane Goodall, and the late Carl Sagan. His most recent book is They All Laughed . . .  From Light Bulbs to Lasers: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our Lives (HarperCollins, New York). It follows Rainbows, Curve Balls and Other Wonders of the Natural World Explained. Flatow has also authored articles for various magazines ranging from Woman’s Day to ESPN Magazine toAmerican Lawyer. His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and Current newspapers.

On television, Flatow has discussed the latest cutting-edge science stories on a variety of programs, most recently on Cablevision’s Maximum Science. He also was host of the four-part PBS series Big Ideas,produced by WNET in New York. His numerous TV credits include six years as host and writer for the Emmy-award-winning Newton’s Appleon PBS, science reporter forCBS This Morning, Westinghouse, and CNBC. He wrote, produced, and hosted Transistorized!, an award-winning PBS documentary on the history of the transistor.

Flatow has hosted numerous science-related Webcasts for Discovery Online and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His Science Friday Kids’ Connection Web pages was honored by Home PC Magazine as one of the top 500 Web sites in the U.S. Science Fridayprograms are among the most popular on the Internet, frequently among the top-ten of all downloads on the iTunes Web site.

In addition to the Exploratorium’s honor, Flatow has also been awarded the National Science Board’s Public Service Award (2005), and the Sigma Xi Award (2005) from the International Honor Society for Research Scientists and Engineers, and others.