Brian Hayes - Science Writer

Brian Hayes - Upper Darby

Brian Hayes grew up in Upper Darby and graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1967. He never attended college and got his first job after high school as a writer for a bowling newsletter. By age 20 he had secured a job as a copy editor for The Baltimore Sun. A year later he took charge of the newspaper's Sunday book-review section.

His major interests had always been in science, and still in his early 20s, by skill, talent and hubris he landed a job on the editorial staff of Scientific American, which at that time was the most distinguished monthly journal of discovery. He became chief editor of and column writer for the magazine, and remained with the publication into the early 1980s.

Since 1993 he has been writing the Computing Science column for American Scientist, a renowned magazine among scientific scholars. His work has also appeared in many other publications including The American Scholar, The Norton Reader, Discover and Natural History. He is also the author of two books: Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape, and Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions.