Elizabeth Quill

Elizabeth Quill

Executive Editor, 2015-2024

Elizabeth Quill is former executive editor of Science News. During two periods at the magazine, from 2008 to 2013 and again from 2015 to 2024, she edited stories and special projects on topics ranging from public health to AI, from climate change to quantum physics. She managed the SN 10: Scientists to Watch list and the Century of Science project and served as editorial coordinator for the Science News Learning program. Originally from the Finger Lakes region of New York, Elizabeth studied journalism at Ithaca College and received her master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

All Stories by Elizabeth Quill

  1. Neuroscience

    Jessica Cantlon seeks the origins of numerical thinking

    Cognitive neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon wants to find out how humans understand numbers and where that understanding comes from.

  2. Science & Society

    Sea life stars in museum’s glass menagerie

    See Leopold and Rudolf Blaschkas’ delicate glass jellyfish, anemones, sea worms and other marine invertebrates at the Corning Museum of Glass.

  3. Science & Society

    ‘House of Lost Worlds’ opens vaults of renowned natural history museum

    'House of Lost Worlds' pays homage to Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History and to the colorful scientists who made the museum great.

  4. Tech

    When Networks Network

    Once studied solo, systems display surprising behavior when they interact.

  5. Physics

    Highlights from the American Physical Society April Meeting, Atlanta

    String theory’s take on the Higgs, newborn pulsars may have iron by-products, and coupled neutrons in beryllium nuclei revealed.

  6. Astronomy

    New data support Einstein on accelerating universe

    New measurements of distant galaxies support Einstein’s cosmological constant as the explanation for the universe’s accelerating expansion.

  7. Anthropology

    Measure Your Giant Carefully And His Size Will Shrink

    Ongoing controversy over a hobbitlike hominid.

  8. Hanging in the balance

    What is the fate of the universe?

  9. Don’t forget beauty

    An ornithologist argues that arbitrary preferences may have a place in the bird world.

  10. Cosmic dioramas

    Metamaterials may offer windows into other worlds.

  11. Book Review: Here’s Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion through the Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos

    Review by Elizabeth Quill.

  12. Seeking a definition

    Pitch is determined by a sound’s frequency. Notes that sit in different positions on a musical scale, called tones, have different pitches. Modern Western music, for example, combines 12 tones, with the A at the middle of a piano keyboard having a frequency of 440 hertz. Other cultures work with fewer tones. The first few […]