Lydia V. Pyne

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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[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

  • with Stephen J. Pyne: The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene. Viking. 2012.[21] Pyne, Lydia; Pyne, Stephen J. (2013). pbk edition. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-312342-2.
  • Bookshelf. Object Lessons (a book series about the hidden lives of ordinary things). Bloomsbury. 2016.[22] Pyne, Lydia (2016). pbk edition. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-5013-0732-4.
  • Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils. Viking. 2016.[23]
  • Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff. Bloomsbury. 8 August 2019. ISBN 978-1-4729-6182-2.[24]
  • Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network. Reaktion Books. 13 October 2021. ISBN 978-1789144857.
  • Endlings: Fables for the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. 16 August 2022. ISBN 978-1-5179-1483-7.

Personal life[edit]

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

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Brenner, Wayne Alan. "The Seven Skeletons of Lydia Pyne". Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Father-daughter co-authors explore new approach to human origins". ASU Now: Access, Excellence, Impact. 26 October 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  3. ^ a b "Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us about Real Stuff". Bookshop. 29 October 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  4. ^ a b c Worrall, Simon (25 September 2016). "Meet 7 Celebrity Fossils and Find Out What Made Them Famous". National Geographic News. Archived from the original on October 8, 2020. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  5. ^ McLemee, Scott. "Lydia Pyne, 'Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff' | Inside Higher Ed". Inside Higher Education. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  6. ^ Poole, Steven (10 December 2019). "'Genuine Fakes' Review: Not Quite the Real Thing". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  7. ^ "Bookshelf - A History". Radio National. 6 September 2016. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  8. ^ a b "In A World Of Lab-Grown Diamonds, What Is Real And Fake?". Science Friday. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  9. ^ "Fake vs. Real — And When It Matters". WHYY. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  10. ^ "Famous Fossils". Think. 17 August 2016. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  11. ^ Peterson, Tim (5 December 2019). "Fake Or Not? And Does It Matter?". Wisconsin Public Radio. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  12. ^ a b "Talk Nerdy Episode 283 - Lydia Pyne". Talk Nerdy. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  13. ^ "Stephen J. Pyne". Stephen Pyne's website. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  14. ^ a b "CV". Lydia Pyne. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  15. ^ "Belated Acclaim for Dorothy Hood's Surreal Abstractions". Hyperallergic. 15 November 2019. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  16. ^ Pyne, Lydia. "'Dinosaur Diplomacy': Andrew Carnegie Thought Fossils Could Save Europe From World War I". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  17. ^ Pyne, Lydia. "Denisovans at Altitude - Archaeology Magazine". Archaeology. 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. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
  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". Publishers Weekly. 26 March 2012.
  22. ^ "The Meaning of a Bookshelf: An Interview with Lydia Pyne". BookPeople. 29 January 2016.
  23. ^ "Review of Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils by Lydia Pyne". Kirkus Reviews. 2016.
  24. ^ "Review of Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff by Lydia Pyne". Publishers Weekly. 14 June 2019.
  25. ^ "AAC Publications - Alam Kuh (4,805m) and Damavand (5,610m), AAC Exchange". American Alpine Club. Retrieved 10 March 2020.

External links[edit]