Deborah Leigh Blum was born on October 19, 1954, in Urbana, Illinois, and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bristol, England, and Athens, Georgia. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism, where she served as the chief editor of the student newspaper, The Red and Black. She began her career as a general assignment reporter covering police, courts, and other beats before transitioning to science writing, eventually earning a master’s degree in environmental journalism from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Blum’s career as a science journalist began at the Fresno Bee, where she became an award-winning environmental reporter. She later joined the Sacramento Bee, where her Pulitzer Prize-winning series, “The Monkey Wars,” explored the ethical conflicts between animal researchers and animal rights activists. She expanded the series into her first book, and continued to publish works that blend science and narrative storytelling, including The Poisoner’s Handbook (2010) and The Poison Squad (2018), both of which became New York Times bestsellers and were adapted into PBS documentaries.
Blum has written extensively about the intersection of science and American culture for publications including The New York Times, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal. She was a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1997 to 2015 and became the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015. There, she founded the digital science magazine Undark, which seeks to illuminate the complexities of science and society.
Blum is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a lifetime associate of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her work in science communication. She is currently under contract with Penguin Press for a book exploring the history of female poisoners, continuing her fascination with the darker intersections of chemistry, history, and human behavior.