Scientific American
Scientific American, informally abbreviated SciAm or sometimes SA, is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Prize-winners being featured since its inception.[2]
Discipline
In print since 1845, it is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. Scientific American is owned by Springer Nature, which is a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
Scientific American 50 award[edit]
The Scientific American 50 award was started in 2002 to recognize contributions to science and technology during the magazine's previous year. The magazine's 50 awards cover many categories including agriculture, communications, defence, environment, and medical diagnostics. The complete list of each year's winners appear in the December issue of the magazine, as well as on the magazine's web site.
Website[edit]
In March 1996, Scientific American launched its own website that included articles from current and past issues, online-only features, daily news, special reports, and trivia, among other things. The website introduced a paywall in April 2019, with readers able to view a few articles for free each month.[39]
Notable features have included:
Television[edit]
From 1990 to 2005 Scientific American produced a television program on PBS called Scientific American Frontiers with hosts Woodie Flowers[40] and Alan Alda.[41]
From 1983 to 1997, Scientific American has produced an encyclopedia set of volumes from their publishing division, the Scientific American Library. These books were not sold in retail stores, but as a Book of the Month Club selection priced from $24.95 to $32.95.
Topics covered dozens of areas of scientific knowledge and included in-depth essays on: The Animal Mind; Atmosphere, Climate, and Change; Beyond the Third Dimension; Cosmic Clouds; Cycles of Life • Civilization and the Biosphere; The Discovery of Subatomic Particles; Diversity and the Tropical Rain Forest; Earthquakes and Geological Discovery; Exploring Planetary Worlds; Gravity's Fatal Attraction; Fire; Fossils and the History of Life; From Quarks to the Cosmos; A Guided Tour of the Living Cell; Human Diversity; Perception; The Solar System; Sun and Earth; The Science of Words (Linguistics); The Science of Musical Sound; The Second Law (of Thermodynamics); Stars; Supercomputing and the Transformation of Science.[42]
Scientific American launched a publishing imprint in 2010 in partnership with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[43]
Scientific and political debate[edit]
In April 1950, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission ordered Scientific American to cease publication of an issue containing an article by Hans Bethe that appeared to reveal classified information about the thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. Subsequent review of the material determined that the AEC had overreacted. The incident was important for the "new" Scientific American's history, as the AEC's decision to burn 3,000 copies of an early press-run of the magazine containing the offending material appeared to be "book burning in a free society" when publisher Gerard Piel leaked the incident to the press.[45]
In the October 2020 issue of the magazine, it endorsed Joe Biden for the 2020 presidential election, citing Donald Trump's rejection of scientific evidence, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.[46][47] In the column reporting the endorsement, the magazine's editors said, "Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly."[48]
