Biography:Lydia V. Pyne

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Short description: American historian and science writer
Lydia V. Pyne
Pyne at the Flaming Cliffs in 2017.
Pyne at the Flaming Cliffs in 2017.
OccupationWriter
Historian[1]
LanguageEnglish
CitizenshipUnited States
EducationUniversity of Texas[1]
Alma materArizona State University[2]
GenreHistory
Non-fiction
SubjectScience
Website
www.pynecone.org

Lydia V. Pyne is an American historian and science writer. She is a current visiting fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.[3] Pyne and her work have been featured in National Geographic,[4] Inside Higher Education,[5] the Wall Street Journal,[6] and on ABC,[7] Science Friday,[8] WHYY,[9] KERA,[10] Wisconsin Public Radio,[11] and Talk Nerdy.[12]

Early life and education

Pyne credits her father, Stephen J. Pyne and her mother, Sonja,[13] with encouraging her to pursue the sciences by being "curious about a lot of things". When she pursued higher education, Pyne was an English major.[1] She ended up switching to anthropology and history, earning a double major in the subjects, both from Arizona State University.[1][14] She earned her master's from the University of Texas, Austin in anthropology and biology at Arizona State.[1][14] For her PhD, she started as an archaeology student and in the end, earned a degree in history and philosophy of science from Arizona State University.[1][2]

Career

Pyne's first book was The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene was co-authored with her father, Stephen J. Pyne in 2012.[1] That year, she served as a fellow at Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.[12]

Pyne's second book is Bookshelf, a history of the bookshelf, which was published in 2016 by Bloomsbury as part of their "Object Lessons" series.[1] That same year, Viking Press published Pyne's Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils. Seven Skeletons presents the history of "celebrity fossils" including Lucy and La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1.[4]

In 2019, Pyne's book Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff was published by Bloomsbury. The book examines the difference between artificial and "real" things, such as real diamonds versus lab grown diamonds.[8]

Currently, Pyne is a visiting researcher at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.[3] Pyne is also a freelance writer. Her science and history writing has been published in Hyperallergic,[15] the Pacific Standard[16] and Archaeology.[17]

Pyne's two most recent books were published in 2021 and 2022. Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network was the first of these, published by Reaktion Books.[18] In it, Pyne investigates postcards in order "to understand them as artifacts that are at the intersection of history, science, technology, art, and culture."[19] Endlings, published in August 2022, is part of the Forerunners: Ideas First series from University of Minnesota Press.[20] In this book, Pyne talks about how the stories we tell about endlings, or the last known individual of a species, draw from various narrative traditions and what those stories can tell us about grief and loss.

Works

Personal life

Pyne lives in Austin, Texas .[4] She's an active member of the American Alpine Club.[25]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Brenner, Wayne Alan. "The Seven Skeletons of Lydia Pyne". https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2016-08-12/the-seven-skeletons-of-lydia-pyne/. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 "Father-daughter co-authors explore new approach to human origins" (in en). 26 October 2012. https://asunow.asu.edu/content/father-daughter-co-authors-explore-new-approach-human-origins. Retrieved 10 March 2020. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us about Real Stuff" (in en). 29 October 2019. https://bookshop.org/books/genuine-fakes-how-phony-things-teach-us-about-real-stuff/9781472961822. Retrieved 10 March 2020. 
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Worrall, Simon (25 September 2016). "Meet 7 Celebrity Fossils and Find Out What Made Them Famous" (in en). https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/09/seven-skeletons-famous-human-fossils-lydia-pyne/. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  5. McLemee, Scott. "Lydia Pyne, 'Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff' | Inside Higher Ed" (in en). Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/09/13/lydia-pyne-genuine-fakes-how-phony-things-teach-us-about-real-stuff. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  6. Poole, Steven (10 December 2019). "'Genuine Fakes' Review: Not Quite the Real Thing". Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/genuine-fakes-review-not-quite-the-real-thing-11576022132. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  7. "Bookshelf - A History" (in en-AU). 6 September 2016. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/booksandarts/bookshelf/7776008. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  8. 8.0 8.1 "In A World Of Lab-Grown Diamonds, What Is Real And Fake?". https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/real-and-fake/. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  9. "Fake vs. Real — And When It Matters". https://whyy.org/episodes/fake-vs-real-and-when-it-matters/. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  10. "Famous Fossils". Think. 17 August 2016. https://think.kera.org/2016/08/17/fossils-and-mankind/. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  11. Peterson, Tim (5 December 2019). "Fake Or Not? And Does It Matter?" (in en). https://www.wpr.org/fake-or-not-and-does-it-matter. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  12. 12.0 12.1 "Talk Nerdy Episode 283 - Lydia Pyne". https://www.carasantamaria.com/podcast/lydia-pyne-2. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  13. "Stephen J. Pyne". http://www.stephenpyne.com/bio.htm. Retrieved 10 March 2020. 
  14. 14.0 14.1 "CV". http://www.pynecone.org/curriculumvita. Retrieved 10 March 2020. 
  15. "Belated Acclaim for Dorothy Hood's Surreal Abstractions". 15 November 2019. https://hyperallergic.com/524646/dorothy-hood-illuminated-earth-mcclain-gallery/. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  16. Pyne, Lydia. "'Dinosaur Diplomacy': Andrew Carnegie Thought Fossils Could Save Europe From World War I" (in en). Pacific Standard. https://psmag.com/ideas/andrew-carnegies-quixotic-quest-to-use-dinosaurs-for-diplomacy. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  17. Pyne, Lydia. "Denisovans at Altitude - Archaeology Magazine". https://www.archaeology.org/issues/364-2001/features/8246-china-tibetan-plateau-denisovans. Retrieved 8 March 2020. 
  18. Pyne, Lydia V. (2021). Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network. Reaktion. ISBN 978-1789144840. 
  19. "Reaktion Books". 18 October 2021. http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781789144840. 
  20. Pyne, Lydia (2022). Endlings: Fables for the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1-5179-1483-7. 
  21. "Review of The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene by Lydia V. Pyne and Stephen J. Pyne". 26 March 2012. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-02363-9. 
  22. "The Meaning of a Bookshelf: An Interview with Lydia Pyne". 29 January 2016. https://bookpeopleblog.com/2016/01/29/the-meaning-of-a-bookshelf-an-interview-with-lydia-pyne/. 
  23. "Review of Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils by Lydia Pyne". 2016. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lydia-pyne/seven-skeletons/. 
  24. "Review of Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff by Lydia Pyne". Publishers Weekly. 14 June 2019. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4729-6182-2. 
  25. "AAC Publications - Alam Kuh (4,805m) and Damavand (5,610m), AAC Exchange". http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12201220100/Asia-Middle-East-Iran-Alam-Kuh-4805m-and-Damavand-5610m-AAC-Exchange. Retrieved 10 March 2020. 

External links