Ron Cowen has been a science writer and editor at NIST since 2016. When not working at NIST, he’s a freelance writer specializing in physics and astronomy. In 2019, he authored his first book, a popular-level account of the 100-year struggle to understand the general theory of relativity, Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes. Cowen has written for Scientific American, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, National Geographic and the news sections of Science and Nature. He was also a staff reporter for 21 years at Science News magazine. Cowen has twice won several awards: the American Institute of Physics' excellence in science writing award, the American Astronomical Society's science writing award in solar physics and the Society's David Schramm science writing award for feature articles on high-energy astrophysics. He has a master's in physics from the University of Maryland.
