2004 Science in Society Journalism Awards

Book

Stephen S. Hall

Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension

Houghton Mifflin

Description:

This book by Stephen S. Hall delves into what is perhaps the single most contentious area of biomedical research today: manipulating human cells to give them capabilities they did not have before. But the judges also commended Hall for telling a good story with “compelling portraits of the ambitious, smart, and sometimes flawed people” involved. Merchants of Immortality is “the kind of book that creates an enduring interest in readers while also giving them the background to pursue the subject on their own,” according to the judges.

Biography:

Stephen S. Hall, the author of Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), has written about science and medicine for more than 20 years, specializing in stories about the impact of science on the culture at large. Hall has been an editor and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine; recent cover stories have included pieces on the biology of fear, the biology of memory, adolescent male body image, MRI experiments on his own brain and the science of embryonic stem cells. His work has appeared in many other magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Forbes FYI, Science, Health, Hippocrates, Science 86 and numerous travel magazines (he has also written extensively about the food and culture of Italy). He also wrote a column called “Biology, Inc.,” about the biotechnology industry, for Technology Review.

Hall is the author of three other critically acclaimed non-fiction book accounts of contemporary science. Invisible Frontiers (1987) is a description of the race to clone the first human gene and the birth of the biotech industry. Mapping the Next Millennium (1992) surveyed recent scientific work in the fields of geophysics, biology, mathematics and astronomy within the historical context of map-making. A Commotion in the Blood (1997), an account of the use of the immune system to battle cancer and other diseases, received the Coley Award from the Cancer Research Institute.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1951, Hall began his career in journalism at age 16 at the Chicago Tribune. He has worked as a sportswriter at Washington Post, a general assignment reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a general editor at the Rome Daily American. Between 1996 and 1999, in addition to writing for The New York Times Magazine, he served as the magazine’s science editor and worked on the small editorial team that conceived and executed the magazine’s six special Millennium issues, which appeared in 1999. He lives with his wife and two children in Brooklyn.

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