Kenneth Chang

Kenneth Chang is a science reporter for The New York Times, covering chemistry, geology, physics, Pluto, and other scientific miscellany. He should have received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois but instead left after seven years to attend the science writing program at University of California at Santa Cruz. He worked at The Los Angeles Times, the Greenwich Time in Connecticut, The Newark Star-Ledger and ABCNEWS.com prior to joining the Times in 2000.

INVITED TALK: Why Does Anyone Care about Dinosaurs, Pluto and the Higgs Boson Anyway?

"Frontier science" is often a euphemism for "esoterica with no practical use" or "too complicated for you to understand, anyway." It is the opposite of "news you can use."Precisely because of that, science stories can capture the imagination of the public - not just scientists- in a way that few other stories do. Successful communication of science takes advantage of the curiosity that people have about the big questions.