David Stipp – Science Writer
About
I’ve written three books, most recently “Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep,” an exploration of Darwinian puzzles posed by close-to-home creatures and things. It will be released in September 2025.
My previous books were “A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula & the Beauty of Mathematics,” an account of mathematics’ most beautiful equation for people who know little math, and “The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution,” about research on ways to slow aging, letting us remain in vibrant health later in life and perhaps live longer.
I began my writing career in 1982 at the Wall Street Journal, where I was a staff reporter for thirteen years covering science, medicine, and the environment. In 1995, I joined Fortune magazine as a senior writer covering science and medicine. I left the magazine in 2006 to work on books and freelance articles. The latter have appeared in Scientific American, the New York Times, HuffPost, Slate magazine, and other publications.
I won the American Aging Association’s Excellence in Journalism Award in 2014. In 1998, I won a National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award, shared with Robert Whitaker, for a Fortune story on the sometimes shady business of selling drugs to treat impotence. In 1993-94, I was a Knight science-writing fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A graduate of the University of Kansas, I have a B.A. in mathematics and philosophy, and an M.S. in journalism.
Books
Why do cats live longer than dogs? Why do many different kinds of bees have yellow stripes? Why are rats so smart and hard to get rid of? Such why questions can be seen as puzzles about evolved designs, and their answers point to adaptations that, in many cases, have been honed over millions of years. “Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep” takes up such questions about nine familiar creatures and things — bumblebees, dogs, sparrows, and caffeine, among others — to reveal hidden depths of the ordinary. The book makes the case that there’s no more engaging way to get in touch with, and fully treasure, the living world than to look at it through a Darwinian lens.”
Bertrand Russell wrote that mathematics can exalt “as surely as poetry.” This is especially true of Euler’s formula, the brainchild of eighteenth century mathematician Leonhard Euler. Mathematicians regard it as a conceptual diamond of unsurpassed beauty. It includes just five numbers yet represents an astonishing revelation of hidden connections, tying together trigonometry, calculus, and deep questions about infinity. “A Most Elegant Equation” explains the formula in terms that people who know only elementary school math can understand, enabling even (former) math-phobes to go on a contemplative stroll through the glories of mathematics.
The pursuit of anti-aging drugs was once an absurd wild-goose chase led by magic thinkers and con men. Now well-respected scientists have turned it into a serious pursuit filled with great promise. In fact, they’ve shown that several widely available compounds, most notably rapamycin, a drug for preventing rejection of transplanted organs, can extend the health spans and longevity of diverse animals, including mammals, and possibly humans. “The Youth Pill” delineates major advances behind this exciting turn of events, including the story of how rapamycin’s anti-aging effect came to light. The book also covers the formidable challenges of developing and commercializing drugs that could slow aging, including the story of Sirtris, a Harvard spinoff based on compounds related to the famous red-wine ingredient resveratrol. Robert Butler, founding director of the National Institute on Aging, praised “The Youth Pill” as a “well-researched, excellent book on the progress of the biology of aging.”
