PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
22 October 2009

Scientific American welcomes 35 distinguished scientists, academics, and entrepreneurs to its Board of Advisers. Acting Editor-in-Chief Mariette DiChristina introduces the new Board of Advisers in the November issue of Scientific American, published online this week.

The advisers will give Scientific American feedback on story proposals and manuscripts; they are at once a source of inspiration and a reality check to ensure Scientific American covers the best in science. DiChristina says, "I personally hope that they will critique and challenge us as well, holding us up to the kind of scrutiny that every endeavor requires to excel."

The gravitas of the Board of Advisers underlines Scientific American's commitment to accurately and accessibly reporting insights from scientists and key opinion leaders. "The researchers who author articles for us are at the pinnacles of their fields," says DiChristina in the November issue. Founded in 1845, over its history Scientific American has published articles by more than 120 Nobel laureate authors including Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Stanley Prusiner and Richard Axel. This close collaboration between Scientific American staff and expert contributors is the bedrock of Scientific American's unique offering amongst consumer science magazines.

Advisers include: Nobel Laureates David Gross and Steven Weinberg; Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society Lord Martin Rees; Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education Eugenie C. Scott; cyberlaw expert Lawrence Lessig; George M Church, who initiated the Personal Genome Project, and many other thought leaders and eminent scientists.

The 35 new advisers join existing Board members Rita Colwell, Danny Hillis, Vinod Khosla, M. Granger Morton, Lisa Randall and George M.Whitesides. Together they will "as friends of the magazine, assist in our mission of being ... the best source for information about science and technology advances and how they will affect our lives," DiChristina writes. "In responding to my invitation, many of the advisers reacted with warm words about Scientific American, telling me how it had inspired them as readers or reminding me of its critical role in informing the public."

Scientific American delivers authoritative and thought-provoking content to more than 3 million readers worldwide and is much admired for its ability to make complex science, medicine, and technology accessible in its articles and visuals. Scientific American became part of Nature Publishing Group (NPG) in 2009, after many years as a sister Holtzbrinck organization. Holtzbrinck and NPG will continue to invest and develop Scientific American to increase its reach, impact and educational value. The magazine, like all NPG publications, is editorially independent.

-ENDS-

Links:

'The Scientists Behind the Stories at Scientific American':
Mariette DiChristina, Scientific American, November 2009

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