Combining her skills as a journalist with an advanced degree in physics, Marcia Bartusiak (pronounced Mar-sha Bar-too'-shack) has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for four decades. The author of seven books, she is Professor of the Practice Emeritus in the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her latest books are "Dispatches from Planet 3," an essay collection for the armchair astronomer, a revised edition of "Einstein's Unfinished Symphony," her award-winning history of gravitational-wave astronomy and its first detections, and "Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved."

Bartusiak is also the author of "Thursday's Universe," a layman's guide to the frontiers of astrophysics and cosmology, and "Through a Universe Darkly," a history of astronomers' centuries-long quest to discover the universe's composition. Both were named notable science books by The New York Times. More recently published are "The Day We Found the Universe", a narrative saga of the birth of modern cosmology and the 2010 winner of the History of Science Society's Davis Prize, and "Archives of the Universe," a history of the major discoveries in astronomy told through 100 of the original scientific publications. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Prize three times, and also received the AIP's prestigious Gemant Award for "significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics."

Graduating in 1971 with a degree in communications from American University in Washington, D.C., Bartusiak first spent four years as a TV reporter and anchorwoman in Norfolk, Virginia. Assignments at the nearby NASA Langley Research Center sparked a love for science news, which encouraged her to enter Old Dominion University for a master's degree in physics. Her research involved the effects of radiation on optical materials sent into space as parts of orbiting astronomical observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Ultraviolet Explorer.

Starting her science-writing career as an intern at Science News and then as a charter member of Discover's writing staff, she continues to write about astronomy and physics in a variety of national publications. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Astronomy, Science, Popular Science, Sky & Telescope, World Book Encyclopedia, Smithsonian, and Technology Review. For many years a contributing editor at Discover, she is now on the editorial advisory board of Astronomy magazine. She also reviews science books for The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Bartusiak lives with her husband, mathematician Steve Lowe, in Sudbury, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.