Ed Yong

Ed Yong is a British-American science journalist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also authored two bestselling books: An Immense World (2022) and I Contain Multitudes (2016).

Ed Yong was born and raised in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He studied science at the University of Cambridge and holds a Master's degree in biochemistry from University College London. He began his career writing for science blogs before becoming a widely published journalist.

From 2015 to 2023, Yong was a staff writer at The Atlantic, where his reporting was critically acclaimed. His work has also appeared in National Geographic, The New Yorker, Wired, Scientific American, and The New York Times.

His coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic won him the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and six other major awards, including the George Polk Award for science reporting and the Victor Cohn Prize for medical science writing. In 2024, Yong was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Yong's first book, I Contain Multitudes (2016), explores the relationships between animals and microbes. His second book, An Immense World (2022), explores how animals perceive the world through their unique sensory abilities. An Immense World won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize. It was also named one of the year's best books by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and over 30 other publications.

Yong's TED Talk on mind-controlling parasites has been viewed over 1.9 million times. His work has been featured in three editions of the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology, which he guest-edited in 2021.

He regularly gives talks and workshops on science communication, often in collaboration with his wife, Liz Neeley, through their collective, Liminal.

Ed Yong lives in Oakland, California, with Liz Neeley and their corgi, Typo.

Photo credit: X @edyong209