The Author

David Baron author photoDavid Baron is an author, journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker whose TED Talk about eclipse chasing has been viewed more than two million times. An avid umbraphile, David has witnessed eight total solar eclipses across the globe—from South America to Europe, Australia to Indonesia. His book AMERICAN ECLIPSE, about the total solar eclipse of 1878, won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award and was shortlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing. The book is now being adapted into a musical by the Tony-nominated composer/lyricist Michael John LaChiusa.

A former science correspondent for NPR, David has also written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Daily BeastBoston Globe, Outside, Scientific American, and other publications.

David Baron and friends at total eclipse of April 20, 2023, in Western Australia
David Baron at the 2023 total eclipse in Australia

David's work has earned some of the top honors in journalism, including the Lowell Thomas Award, the Alfred I. duPont Award, the National Academies Communications Award, and, on three occasions, the annual journalism prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His 2003 book, THE BEAST IN THE GARDEN, received the Colorado Book Award.

David recently served as the Baruch S. Blumberg Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation at the Library of Congress and is writing a book about the planet Mars. An affiliate of the University of Colorado's Center for Environmental Journalism, he lives in Boulder.

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Praise for AMERICAN ECLIPSE
"David Baron contracted an incurable case of ‘umbraphilia’ twenty years ago in Aruba. Fortunately for readers, Baron’s fever stokes his account of the first great American eclipse, in 1878, while priming us for the next one — and the next, and the next. " —Dava Sobel, New York Times bestselling author of Longitude and The Glass Universe