Charlie Petit is a freelance writer and Contributing Editor for U.S. News & World Report, working from his home in Berkeley, Ca.

Petit from 1998 to 2004 was a Senior Writer with U.S. News & World Report, and he earlier had been a science writer with the San Francisco Chronicle.

Petit has a B.A. in astronomy from Berkeley and he attended the University of Southern California graduate school in journalism. He is a member of the Board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a past President of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW). He is the president and co-founder of the Northern California Science Writers Association, and he has served as a science writing fellow at MIT.

Petit's science writing interests range from astronomy and earth sciences, to advanced technologies, archeology, paleontology, evolution, and climate change. He has contributed to a wide range of periodicals, including Nature, Science, Mosaic, Earth, National Geographic, and Smithsonian.

Petit is the winner of the 1999 AAAS-Whitaker Prize for Science Writing (magazine category); of the 1990 AAAS-Westinghouse Prize (large newspapers); of the 1991 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award; of the 1990 National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award; and of the 1995 American Heart Association C. Everett Koop Media Award.