Back Story: What Spectrum and Quanta Magazines Are All About
Spectrum and Quanta, the two editorially independent magazines funded by the Simons Foundation, cover completely different topics: Spectrum covers autism research, and Quanta focuses on math, physics and computer science, as well as basic research in biology. But they have a lot in common as well. Both cover topics that mainstream media has neither the resources nor the dedicated science writers to cover in-depth, and both strive to foster community and lively conversation among their readers.
Spectrum aims to make current advances in autism research as accessible as possible. “Scientists who work on autism research are really diverse,” says Apoorva Mandavilli, editor-in-chief of Spectrum. They are neuroscientists, geneticists, psychologists and behavioral scientists. Some are clinicians and others work in labs remote from people with the condition. “They don’t all have the same background or use the same jargon, so our approach is to avoid jargon and write at a level that is clear and accessible,” Mandavilli says. As a result, Spectrum’s work is valuable for both scientists and interested lay readers, who tend to be people with autism and their families and friends.
