In Memoriam: Sharon Begley

I am deeply saddened by the passing of Sharon Begley, one of the world’s most inspiring and very best science writers. I remember her most from the days of the Humane Genome Project, when I was leading communications for the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research under Dr. Eric Lander. Sharon, who was a science writer at Newsweek and at The Wall Street Journal, called regularly for updates and insights, and for thought partnership in analyzing where things would go.  

She was legendary even then; someone everyone in the science writing community, including me, aspired to be like. It was always exciting to talk with her, and with her knowledge about science and keen curiosity about its inner workings, her wit and unique points of view, and her astute questions that always took things in new directions, she was as instrumental to bringing the genome to life as the scientists were. She had a rare gift of seeing into the future, and she told the story of scientific progress in a way that was accessible and left the reader hungry for more. 

The year before COVID, and before Sharon came down with lung cancer, we worked together on the evolving Ebola crisis. She was always collaborative, and her questions – somehow different and more incisive than anyone else’s - had a way of sharpening my own knowledge and thinking. I saw her last on a visit to the STAT offices in Boston. She was heads down on a story, deep in thought and no doubt on deadline, but Sharon, being Sharon – always friendly, always collaborative - took the time to connect with me anyway.

A lot has changed since 2003 when the Human Genome was published. The entire human genome can now be sequenced in an hour. COVID has stolen more than 2 million lives worldwide, and the fastest vaccine development and distribution effort of all time is underway. And after years of uncertainty in American science policy, Eric Lander has been nominated to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and for the first time it’s slated to become a cabinet-level agency. At the same time, communications has been revolutionized by changing platforms and a changed post-COVID world, as @MichaelSneed writes in this on-point blog post, while evolving storytelling modalities like The Road to a Vaccine are helping to build trust in science in a new way.

 But without Sharon, the world is left without anyone to make us better thinkers by asking the questions no one else asks, to see into the future, and to make sense of what it all might mean. She will be greatly missed by every one of her readers, and by all of us who had the great fortune to work with her.