The American Institute of Physics (AIP) instituted their Science Writing Award to "promote effective science communication in print and broadcast media in order to improve the general public's appreciation of physics, astronomy, and allied science fields." The winner receives $3000, and an engraved Windsor chair. The award is given in three broad categories: 1) science writing, 2) work intended for children, and 3) work done in new media. The AIP stopped issuing awards to three categories: 1) work by a professional journalist (last awarded in 2011) 2) work by a scientist (last awarded in 2009), and 3) broadcast media (last awarded in 2009)
Winners of this Science Writing Award include Nobel Prize winners Charles Townes, Steven Weinberg, and Kip Thorne; other notable winners include Simon Singh, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, John Wheeler, Leonard Susskind, Clifford Martin Will, Abraham Pais, Heinz Pagels, Banesh Hoffmann, and Martin Gardner. Marcia Bartusiak has won the award three times, twice for her books (in 2019 and 2001) and once for her journalism (in 1982).
Winners: New Media
2012: - Anna Rothschild for Nova, "The Amazing Atomic Clock"
Past Winners: Books
2020: Susan Hockfield for The Age of Living Machines (W.W. Norton & Company). 2019: Marcia Bartusiak for Dispatches from Planet 3 (Yale University Press). 2019: David Hu for How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls (Yale University Press). 2018: David Baron for American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World (Liveright Publishing Corporation/W. W. Norton & Company). 2017: Timothy Jorgensen for Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation (Princeton University Press). 2016: Chris Woodford for Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Surprising Science Hidden in Your Home (Bloomsbury). 2015: Charles Adler for Wizards, Aliens, and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction (Princeton University Press). 2014: Lee Billings for Five Billion Years of Solitude: the Search for Life Among the Stars (Current/Penguin).