2004 Honorary Member
After studying physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a year in graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles studying astronomy, Dennis Overbye went back to Cambridge to pursue a writing career, which had always been his first love. He moved to New York in 1980 when Time Inc. started Discover magazine, where he was a staff writer and editor. He has also been a writer and editor for Sky and Telescope. In 1985, he signed a book contract and moved to Woodstock, where he finished two books, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos andEinstein in Love. Overbye joined The New York Times as deputy science editor in 1998, and is now a reporter covering cosmic affairs. His writings have appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos was nominated for a National Book Critics' Circle Award in nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Book Award in Science. It won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, which he also received in 1980 for an Omni Magazine article called "The Wizard of Time and Space."