John Horgan (born 1953) is an American science journalist best known for his 1996 book The End of Science. He has written for many publications, including National Geographic, Scientific American, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and IEEE Spectrum. His awards include two Science Journalism Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award. His articles have been included in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Since 2010 he has written the "Cross-check" blog for ScientificAmerican.com. Horgan graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism in 1983. Between 1986 and 1997 he was a senior writer at Scientific American. 1990s assertions His October 1993 Scientific American article, "The Death of Proof", claimed that the growing complexity of mathematics, combined with "computer proofs" and other developments, were undermining traditional concepts of mathematical proof. The article generated "torrents of howls and complaints" from mathematicians, according to David Hoffman (one of the mathematicians Horgan interviewed for the article). In response to this article, the Horgan surface is, sarcastically, named after him. It is a speculated embedded minimal surface whose existence is strongly suggested by computers but doubted by many mathematicians. The non-existence of the Horgan surface is later established rigorously through a mathematical proof, completing the sarcasm with the term "Horgan non-surface". Horgan's 1996 book The End of Science begins where "The Death of Proof" leaves off: in it, Horgan argues that pure science, defined as "the primordial human quest to understand the universe and our place in it," may be coming to an end. Horgan claims that science will not achieve insights into nature as profound as evolution by natural selection, the double helix, the Big Bang, relativity theory or quantum mechanics. In the future, he suggests, scientists will refine, extend and apply this pre-existing knowledge but will not achieve any more great "revolutions or revelations." Nobel laureate Phil Anderson wrote in 1999 "The reason that Horgan's pessimism is so wrong lies in the nature of science itself. Whenever a question receives an answer, science moves on and asks a new kind of question, of which there seem to be an endless supply." A front-page review in The New York Times called the book "intellectually bracing, sweepingly reported, often brilliant and sometimes bullying." In 2000 Horgan wrote a supportive review of Patrick Tierney's Darkness