Pulitzers Honor CASW Awardee’s Work, Other Science Journalism

The decade-old online science and math magazine Quanta went up against the juggernauts of print journalism to win the prestigious 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. The award cited Natalie Wolchover, Quanta’s senior editor covering the physical sciences and the 2016 winner of CASW’s Clark/Payne Award, for “coverage that revealed the complexities of building the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to facilitate groundbreaking astronomical and cosmological research.”

“We feel deeply honored and thrilled, particularly for this recognition of our wonderfully talented and hard-working colleague @nattyover, who has been a big part of Quanta since the beginning,” @QuantaMagazine tweeted after the announcement.

Based in New York City, Quanta Magazine is one of a new generation of prize-winning non-profit publications. It is an editorially independent magazine specializing in basic science, math and physical sciences as well as biology and computer science with financial support from the Simons Foundation. Quanta has several global syndication partners, with some stories translated into German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Italian and Japanese. This gives the magazine a broad audience far beyond the online publication itself.

Wolchover, 35, was home with a bad case of COVID-19 when she learned of the Pulitzer. “While I was in a feverish daze, I suddenly started getting a barrage of Twitter notifications. I checked my phone, and because of the fever, could hardly believe what I was seeing!” she wrote in an email.