John Rennie Joins Quanta Magazine as Deputy Editor

NEW YORK, April 17, 2017 — John Rennie joined Quanta Magazine today as a deputy editor. Rennie, who previously served as editor in chief of Scientific American, will lead Quanta’s biology coverage.

“Basic research and mathematics are foundational for all the amazing scientific and technological accomplishments we see, and yet most of journalism gives them sharply limited attention at best. I couldn’t be more thrilled to now be working with the great Quanta editorial team to help show the world what it’s been missing,” Rennie said. “Getting to do this at Quanta is a dream come true for me because there are so few magazines with such committed interest in basic research, and such attention to editorial excellence.”

Rennie brings three decades of experience as a science writer and editor, as well as a more recent television credit as the creator and host of Hacking the Planet, an original 2013 series for the Weather Channel. He has also appeared on television and radio on programs such as PBS’s NewsHour, ABC’s World News Now, NPR’s Science Friday, the History Channel special Clash of the Cavemen and the Science Channel series Space’s Deepest Secrets. Rennie has also been an adjunct professor of science writing at New York University since 2009. From 2012 until this year, he was the editorial director of McGraw-Hill Education’s online science encyclopedia AccessScience.

Outside of science writing, Rennie spends his time studying karate (he is a fifth-degree black belt, as is his wife) and explaining to New Yorkers that his two spotted dogs are not in fact hyenas.