2012 Honorary Member
Science author and journalist Dennis Meredith will be inducted as an Honorary Life Member of Sigma Xi. Meredith's career as a science communicator has included service at some of the country's leading research universities, including MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Duke and the University of Wisconsin. He has worked with science journalists at all the nation's major newspapers, magazines and radio and TV networks and has written well over 1,000 news releases and magazine articles on science and engineering over his career.
He has served on the executive board of the National Association of Science Writers and is a contributor to its magazine ScienceWriters. He wrote the NASW handbook on media relations, Communicating Science News. He has also served as a judge for the NASW Science-in-Society Awards and the AAAS Science Writing Awards. He won the latter award himself — for newspapers under 100,000 circulation — in 1974. He was a creator and developer of EurekAlert!, working with AAAS to establish this international research news service, which now links more than 4,500 journalists to news from 800 subscribing research institutions.
He has also worked with federal agencies and scientific journals, including NSF and the Public Library of Science, to help them develop policies for communicating research and collaborating with public information officers. Since 1983, noted science advocates, top science journalists and friends of research who have made important contributions to science but are not eligible for Sigma Xi membership, have been elected Honorary Members.