Physics and Princeton University Press go together like PB&J. The Press has the distinct honor of being the publisher for Albert Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity and we co-sponsor and publish The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. We’ve also published The Nature of Space and Time by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos by Robert P. Kirshner, Our Cosmic Habitat by Martin Rees, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by A. Zee, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman. These books form the backbone of the Press’s early and continuing publishing program in the physical sciences. It must be a daunting task to discover and publish titles that can stand toe-to-toe with these giants, yet Ingrid Gnerlich, Senior Editor for physical sciences, does just this. Ingrid acquires books in physics, astronomy, climatology and oversees multiple book series.  Recently, she took time out to answer a few questions about the challenges she faces in science editing and to share her thoughts on a few recent and forthcoming titles.

What is your background? Have you been interested in the sciences since childhood? What brought you into science publishing?

I grew up a house in which science and art were discussed equally. My parents – a professor of electrical engineering and a professor of art – raised me and my brother to feel completely at home in an environment in which C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” intermingled easily. Though my primary interests in growing up happened to be more humanistic in slant, while my brother’s were more scientific, I never felt excluded from discussions about scientific topics at home. As a result, I always felt entitled to understanding, whether the discussion had to do with the promise of fusion energy or the interpretation of a piece of music.

As I grew older, I found that my home environment wasn’t exactly representative of the wider world. Even very smart people allow themselves to be herded (or relegate themselves to) one or another side of Snow’s cultural divide, and blind and deafen themselves to the wonders around them, because they have been led to believe that science is too hard for them to understand or that, incredibly, it’s boring. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the inimitable Feynman once put it, “It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”

Frankly, I prefer to discover my own tastes and limits, rather than have them put upon me by others. I like to explore new ideas, regardless of disciplinary or “cultural” boundaries. I think that other people generally agree that intellectual curiosity should be fostered and creative freedom is a joy. But, given a healthy dose of curiosity and a sense of intellectual freedom, where does one turn? The written word, of course: books, journals, newspapers, and the like. That said, there are gatekeepers to the forms in which high-quality information is packaged. Those gatekeepers have traditionally been reputable publishers.

Publishers help authors bring information to curious people, providing them with sound and interesting answers to their questions. Subsequently, I’ve always thought that publishers do some real good in the world. And I liked the thought of being involved in that industry somehow – preferably by working with authors to help them communicate and bring to market their best new ideas and scholarship. Doing just that is essentially what being an acquisitions or commissioning editor is all about. Also, I understood that being an editor is a service, a contribution to a larger mission to foster curiosity and intellectual free-range. One book at a time, I thought, perhaps I could help to bridge Snow’s unnecessary divide and eventually see it eliminated altogether. This idea had, and still has, great appeal to me. So, I started on the path to become an acquisitions editor in science.

What got you interested in publishing – and acquisitions, in particular – in the first place? When and why did you become a science editor?

Regarding my interest in publishing, I suppose I’ve always been attracted to the publishing industry, because I’ve always been interested in new ideas, good writing, and in the books that contain them. The prospect of discussing brand new book ideas with prospective authors and helping to generate new books as a commissioning editor struck me as intriguing from the first, and I’ve found the reality of acquiring and encouraging new books into the bright light of day to be very satisfying. It is creative and self-effacing work by turns. I think of my work as a service that I do to facilitate scholarship and the dissemination of knowledge and to encourage education… Not a bad way to spend one’s day.

Concerning the appeal of science publishing in particular, I became a science editor, largely because I find science fascinating. The ongoing discovery of how our universe works is naturally a captivating subject – for anyone, whether you are someone without higher education or if you are a professor at an ivy-league institution. Starting from there (i.e., the natural appeal of science as a subject of curiosity), I also became a science editor, because I believe in the value of communicating the best science to anyone who is interested in learning. My job is to make the best scholarship and most exciting ideas in this discipline accessible to readers at every level – from professors to students to the general public – and that gives me a sense of satisfaction that is, I think, not so easy to find in one’s daily work. I feel that, by bringing big ideas and great scholarship to a wide readership, my day’s work has a purpose. And that is why I’ve worked in science publishing for over a decade.

How do you personally acquire books in the physical sciences?

Commissioning new books is a job for determined optimists. At all times, I keep a running list in mind of the books I want to publish each year and the authors I want to write them. Then, with this list revolving through my mind, I go out and try to acquire those books. In essence, that means going straight to the author to pitch the idea and to discover whether the time is right for my author-of-choice to write the book I have in mind – or if a different idea may be a more natural or interesting choice. My efforts are interspersed with proposals that come to me directly from authors and from agents. I also sit down with many scholars and writers throughout the year to get to know their interests and personalities better, to hear where their research is going, and to find out which areas they think would make exciting topics for books in various genres. I often sign new books under “advance contracts,” and then work with the authors to encourage their books to completion (in a timely fashion, of course!). When the complete manuscripts come in-house, they are rigorously reviewed by expert readers in the field, and I coordinate that process. If the books are “trade” titles, I usually work closely with the authors to make sure that their manuscripts are as accessible as possible for the desired audience of lay readers. If the books are textbooks or professional books, they need a different sort of attention, having more to do with packaging and positioning concerns in context of existing competition on the market. I also then oversee the progress of the book through production and then out into the wide world as a beautifully designed and produced, finished book.

What are some of the biggest challenges of publishing books in the physical sciences?

Science is a journal-driven culture. Book writing is not necessarily encouraged, particularly if you are an nontenured academic, and many highly regarded scholars could easily go through their entire, illustrious careers without ever writing a book. Therefore, the decision to take time away from paper-writing to go through the process of writing a book is a very personal one. The motivation to write a book is usually either to do a service to one’s community (via a textbook or synthetic monograph) or to make a statement to a larger community (by way of a book for a general audience). If the motivation is there, I can provide feedback regarding a potential market niche and advice on how best to write, produce, and bring to market a book that will fill that niche. But, the biggest initial challenge is to match the right author with the right project at the right time. In that sense, publishing in the sciences is a lot like matchmaking… It can take time, persistence, and a lot of optimism. However, when you finally do make a good match, it’s a very happy day.

You are currently working on a few new book series. Can you briefly describe them?

The various book series on my list are generally organized by genre. For example, we have a series of core, advanced undergraduate- and graduate-level textbooks in physics, which are housed in the In a Nutshell series. We also have a series of sophisticated popular-level books, which we publish in consultation with an advisory board of National Academy of Sciences members, entitled the Science Essentials series. Also, for a broad audience of general and professional readers, we have the Princeton Science Library series, which includes the likes of Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity, Feynman’s QED, and Hawking & Penrose’s The Nature of Space and Time. Other series include the prestigious Princeton Series in Astrophysics and the new Princeton Series in Modern Observational Astronomy, which include textbooks and monographs in astrophysics and astronomy. I also publish many books independently of these series, of course.

Recently, I’ve been working to grow two new book series, in an effort to expand the genre mix in which we publish and to explore an intermediate, and (I believe) underserved readership – inquisitive undergraduate science majors and scientists who are interested in fields other than their own. The first series we’ve just started is called the Princeton Frontiers in Physics series. The books in this series identify the key questions that are moving the frontiers of the physical sciences forward and describe where we are in our search for the answers. The title questions range widely – from topics in astrophysics to condensed matter – but all are housed under the grand umbrella of physics research. The books are all short, are published in affordable paperback editions, and only require “conversational fluency” with college-level calculus – no disciplinary specialization.

Another similar series we’re working on here is called the Princeton Primers in Climate series. This series is meant to include short, authoritative books on fundamental topics in climate. Each primer, authored by an expert in the field, will focus on a particular facet of the climate system, explaining how the topic of focus fits into our overall understanding of the climate system, as well as contemporary and future climate change. Again, calculus is used, but the prose is conversational in tone, and all discipline-specific terms and concepts are clearly defined and explained. Suggestions for further reading and reference are also offered in every book.

Since we mean each series to include very short, affordable, fairly introductory-level books that can be read in a few sittings, the challenge for each author is to present the core ideas at the heart of his or her respective field both within a short space and in a forward-thinking manner. It’s our hope that these sorts of short books will work as ideal “jumping-off points” for physical sciences students, and that they will encourage wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and guide the pursuit of further reading, study, and research on topics that these students might not have investigated otherwise. We also hope that the books will give professional and academic readers coming from any scientific background the opportunity to quickly gain a more sophisticated knowledge of the core ideas and the state-of-the-art of frontier areas of research, directly from the top people actively moving those areas forward. We believe that this set of readers is hard-pressed to find this kind of information in one place for an affordable price in a format that is a pleasure to read.

As I’ve said above, I think that smart, curious people should be able to explore beyond disciplinary boundaries and to learn about the best new ideas and exciting research directly from active researchers, without having to turn first to specialized journal literature or textbooks. So, by seeking out and publishing these types of fun-to-read, but quantitatively sophisticated books, I seriously hope to foster students’ and even established scholars’ intellectual curiosity in productive and exciting ways.

Tell us about a few of your most interesting acquisitions.

I’m very excited about a recent hit, Steve Gubser’s The Little Book of String Theory, which is a great, pocket-sized introduction to the esoteric world of strings, branes, and extra dimensions. Written by a young and dynamic string theorist here at Princeton, it’s a fun book – accessible, but also rich with science, and mind-bending in the best possible way. I also really enjoyed working on James Kasting’s How to Find a Habitable Planet, which is a sophisticated and lucid account of the vibrant, ongoing search for extrasolar habitable worlds. Kasting’s broad, deep perspective shines out from every word of this book.

Of the new books that are due to come in-house soon and that I’m very keen to be publishing, a few spring to mind in particular. One is a popular-level book that will explore two mysterious components of our universe, dark matter and dark energy. This book is being written by Jeremiah Ostriker, the renowned Princeton astrophysicist and cosmologist, and his co-author, Simon Mitton. Another is a book on the controversial topic of geoengineering by Oliver Morton, The Economist‘s Energy and Environment Editor. Yet another is a book about how the internet and online tools are changing the art of scientific discovery, by Michael Nielsen, a writer, innovator, and one of the pioneers of quantum computation. I also am looking forward to publishing many other books, of course – too numerous to mention here – but this should give you a sense for just a few of the exciting titles that are coming along very soon. Stay tuned!