Short Bio

Andrea Wulf is an award–winning author of six acclaimed books, including the ‘Founding Gardeners’ and ‘The Invention of Nature’ which were both on the New York Times Best Seller List. She has written for New York Times, the Atlantic, the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian and many others.

She has lectured across the world – from the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Society in London to Monticello and the New York Public Library in the US. She’s spoken to audiences from Colombia to Europe, as well as to 15,000 people at the Esri User Conference in San Diego and literary festivals across the world. She is a Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013. She's a member of PEN American Center, an International Fellow of the Explorer's Club, a member of The Society of Woman Geographers, a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Andrea is a regular on radio and TV in the US, the UK and in Germany. The ZDF / Smithsonian Humboldt documentary won the Discovery Award 2019 / Science Film Festival. In 2019, she was part of the delegation that accompanied Germany's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on his trip to Ecuador and Colombian ... following Humboldt's footsteps.

The “Brother Gardeners” was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008, the most prestigious non-fiction award in the UK and won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award. “Founding Gardeners” and 'The Invention of Nature" were both on the New York Times Best Seller List.

"The Invention of Nature" has won 15 international awards, including the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016, Costa Biography Award 2015, the Inaugural James Wright Award for Nature Writing 2016 (Kenyon Review in association with the Nature Conservancy) and the LA Times Book Prize 2016, as well as awards in Germany, China, France and Italy. It was selected by New York Times "10 Best Books of 2015" and will be published in 28 countries. It was on Germany's bestseller list for more than three years and has sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide. 

She is currently writing a book about the young Romantics, the Self and how we set ourselves free. The Magnificent Rebels. The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self will be published in autumn 2022.

 

Comments

[David Fried]

Hello Andrea,

I was at Kitt Peak on Tuesday, enjoyed your talk and bought your book, which I am now reading. May I offer a small correction? On page 53, you have an engraving of "An astronomer observing the transit of Venus." Nope--it's an astronomer using a transit instrument, a completely different thing. Star positions were recorded by using a telescope rigidly mounted, like this one, to move on only one axis--the north-south line. The altitude of the scope gave the star's declination, or "latitude." The moment when the star crossed the north-south meridian-its "transit" time--gave its right ascension, or "longitude." This is almost certainly what the observer is doing, with his notebook and illuminated clock, although a separate notetaker at the clock would be preferable (that's how Wm. and Caroline Herschel worked.) A transit instrument would also reveal the night-to-night motions of a new planet or asteroid. I'm interested to see the hourglass, which presumably served as a "stopwatch" for recording short intervals. A seconds-beating pendulum (and many astronomical regulators beat double-seconds) would not accurately show fractions of a second.

Such a set-up would be of no use in observing a transit of Venus, which lasted for hours as the sun moved through the sky. The telescope would therefore have to be able to track in all directions.

Mr.Keating's first point above about determining latitude is also correct, but his second needs expansion. The "analemma" is a figure used to graphically display the "equation of time," or difference between mean solar noon (clock time) and local noon on any given day. I'm not sure I see the relevance to navigation, because I don't think the equation of time varies with latitude--but I'm not sure.

[Himansu (Snowy) baijnathh]

Dear Ms Wulf

I am awed by the range and detail of your outputs. Am a Kew trained plant scientist and in addition to other functions have been exploring for the past decade and half the family Strelitziaceae to which Strelitzia reginae, the Bird of Paradise belongs. I was very pleased with your glossary in "The Brother Gardeners". You have recorded on page 264 that"..Masson
introduced it in 1773 to Kew, and by 1790 it had flowered...." I would be eternally grateful if you could lead me to a reference where this is recorded as I require the data for a publication. My email address is baijnathh@ukzn.ac.za and I live in Strelitzia country, South Africa.
Good luck with your new ventures, I meant adventures.

With thanks
Himansu Baijnath (Professor)

[Vicki Livingstone]

I am the Program Chair of the Nantucket Garden Club in Nantucket, Ma. I would like to know how you charge for a lecture and whether we might be able to work something out between the Nantucket Atheneum and ourselves to have you speak to us at one of our meetings. Thank you, Vicki Livingstone

[Erik Zehender]

Andrea, On behalf of Northwest Michigan Master Gardeners Association, I'd like to invite you to visit the Leelanau County/Traverse City area whenever you're in the Midwest. We have a highly literate community that fills our local opera house to watch interviews with accomplished writers. Two events, one for the general public and one for Master Gardeners, teachers and high school students would be a format similar to one we did with Peter Matthiessen. Please email.
Cheers, Erik Zehender