Carl Zimmer

In his keynote talk at The Rockefeller University on 6 September 2017, he noted that democracy, science and journalism are "three valuable institutions that have made life...far better than it would have been without them." He stated however that we should not take it for granted that they are free from corruption, and urged to keep them that way. Specifically, he stated that "We can look back through history and see how in different places and in different times, each of these pillars cracked and sometimes fell. We should not be smug, when we look back at these episodes. We should not be so arrogant, as to believe that we are so much smarter or nobler that we're somehow immune from this disasters." Zimmer is critical of politicians negative influence on science. Specifically, he is critical of Trump's anti-science stance, specifically his denial of human-caused climate change. Similarly, he is critical of Trump's appointment of science-deniers to lead crucial US environmental agencies, such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Energy. Zimmer is also critical of Putin's influence on Russian science, specifically Putin's "friendly take-over" of a Russian science magazine, Putin being the "hands-off chairman" of the Russian Geographic Society.

The first day of 2014 Fall For The Book festival in Fairfax County, Virginia

Carl Zimmer speaking at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism in 2011

He has given lectures at some of USA's leading universities, medical schools, and museums. In 2009, Zimmer was the keynote speaker at Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS). He has also presented at NECSS 2011 and CSICon 2018. Twice, Zimmer has been a spotlight speaker at Aspen Ideas Festival, in 2017 at Aspen Ideas, and in 2018 for Aspen Ideas: Health. In 2009 and 2010 he was host of the periodic audio podcast Meet the Scientist of the American Society for Microbiology (replacing Merry Buckley). Zimmer's 2004 article Whose Life Would You Save? has been featured in the 2005 The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

Zimmer is widely recognized as one of the finest science essayists and communicators, and has thus received numerous awards including the 2007 National Academies Communication Award, a prize for science communication from the United States National Academy of Sciences, for his wide-ranging coverage of biology and evolution in newspapers, magazines and his blog. For these same reasons, in 2016 Yale University appointed Zimmer Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, stating that he is "a world-renowned science journalist and teacher, and his ability to make science, particularly biology, accessible to the general public is without peer". Zimmer teaches a science communication course at Yale since 2017 and participates in other Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry courses.

Zimmer describes his journalistic beat as "life" or "what it means to be alive." He is also the only science writer to have a species of tapeworm named after him (Acanthobothrium zimmeri). Zimmer lives with his wife Grace Farrell Zimmer and their two children, Charlotte and Veronica, in Guilford, Connecticut. Carl Zimmer's father is Dick Zimmer, a Republican politician from New Jersey, who was a member of U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1997.

Zimmer received his B.A. in English from Yale University in 1987. In 1989, he started his career at Discover magazine, first as a copy editor and fact checker, eventually serving as a senior editor from 1994 to 1998. Zimmer left Discover after ten years to focus on books and other projects. In 2004, he started a blog called "The Loom", in which he wrote about topics related to his books, but later expanded it into what he terms "a place where I could write about things I might not be turning into an article for a magazine, but were really interesting”. The Loom has been hosted by Discover and National Geographic for many years, and was invited to be part of Scienceblogs in the past. It has been transferred to Zimmer's personal website in 2018. As of 2013, Zimmer writes a weekly column called Matter in The New York Times. Zimmer and the STAT project team have put out “Game of Genomes,” a 13-part series that enlisted two dozen scientists, with the goal of exploring Zimmer's own genome.

Carl Zimmer (born 1966) is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. He is the author of many books and contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times, Discover, and National Geographic. He is a fellow at Yale University's Morse College and adjunct professor of Molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. Besides his popular science writing, Zimmer also gives frequent lectures, and has appeared on many radio shows, including National Public Radio's Radiolab, Fresh Air and This American Life.