Quanta Contributor Max G. Levy Wins AAAS Kavli Gold Award for Science Journalism

A photo of a bee surrounded by static electricity, paired with a photo of Max G. Levy, a smiling man

Each year, science journalists from around the world compete in eight categories for the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. This year, judges from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Kavli Foundation recognized Quanta Magazine contributing writer Max G. Levy with a Gold Award in the Magazine category for “The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology,” a detailed account of how small organisms use static electricity to their advantage.

“It’s hard for us to imagine what the world feels like at the smallest scales inhabited by insects,” Levy says. “I was so fascinated to learn about how forces we normally consider weak are actually strong enough to perhaps influence evolution.”

Quanta biology editor Hannah Waters worked with Levy and the Quanta art department to help convey the basic science of the topic — from the static charge on honeybee wings to the electric fields on spider webs — through words, infographics and illustration. The piece also tells a human story about how following curiosity leads to scientific understanding. 

“Sometimes all the elements of a magazine story come together just beautifully, and this is true of Max’s feature,” Waters says. “He invites readers to join scientists as they work to uncover a hidden world beyond human perception, and his careful, elegant description of physics at the microscopic scale makes us temporarily feel like we, too, are bugs influenced by weak electrostatic forces. Thank you to Max and all the members of Quanta‘s team, especially the art department, who worked on this story, and to AAAS and The Kavli Foundation for this recognition.”

This is the first Kavli award for a story that appeared in Quanta, an editorially independent digital magazine supported by the Simons Foundation. Led by editor in chief Samir Patel, the publication also recently received a National Magazine Award for a special issue focused on the nature of reality. Audiences continue coming to Quanta for unmatched storytelling about the most basic levels of the natural world.

“Stories like this remind me that nature continues to surprise us,” Levy says. “Life is so beautifully strange. And I’m proud to have worked with Hannah Waters and the Quanta team on this project.”