About Matt — Matt Kaplan

I have been a science correspondent with The Economist for more than a decade and have contributed nearly half a million words to the newspaper during that time. Over the years, I've also written for National Geographic, The New York Times,Scientific American,Natureand New Scientist. Outside of my journalistic endeavours, I've long been intrigued by the ways in which our ancestors tried to explain mysterious aspects of the natural world with mythology. To this end, I wrote two books on the subject: Science of the Magical and The Science of Monsters. I was awarded a Knight Fellowship in 2014, presumably for writing well, and used the opportunity to study immunology at MIT and folklore at Harvard. An unabashed geek,*I wrote the widely circulated From Gollum to Avatarwhich explored how Hollywood made the technological leap from Yoda in the original Star Wars to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and ultimately to the Na’vi in Avatar. I was also the voice behind many other Economist stories o...