J. Madeleine Nash is a contributor to Time Magazine and for 15 years was its chief science correspondent. She is the author of El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker (Warner Books, March 2002).

She is the author of many Time stories, including the wide range of Time science cover stories such as "How Life Began" (Oct. 11, 1993), "Hope in the War Against Cancer" (April 25,1994), "Evolution's Big Bang" (Dec. 4, 1995), "On the Trail of Twisters" (May 20, 1996), and "The Fury of El Niņo" (February 16, 1998).

In July 2002, she spent a week in Brazil's impoverished interior reporting on a wildlife biologist and his wife who are attempting to reconnect isolated patches of the Atlantic rainforest. In December 2002, she spent two weeks in Antarctica, courtesy of the National Science Foundation, and wrote a cover-length story that appeared in the Feb. 3, 2003 issue of Time. More recently she traveled to Oregon and Arizona to investigate tree thinning in the national forests, which resulted in a five-page story that appeared in Time (August 18, 2003).

A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, Nash graduated from Bryn Mawr College with an AB in history in 1965. Later that year, she joined Time and in 1966, she became a reporter-researcher working for the magazine's Business, Behavior and Art sections.

Nash began specializing in science in 1986 and in 1987, was named Time senior correspondent. In 1996 she received the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) magazine writing award for "Evolution's Big Bang." Along with her colleagues, Nash received two other AAAS awards for the cover stories "Smash: Colossal Colliders Are Unlocking the Secrets of the Universe" (April 16, 1990) and "Wiring the Future: The Superconductivity Revolution" (May 11, 1987).

Nash is a member of the AAAS, the National Association of Science Writers, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. In 1997, the scientific society Sigma Xi inducted her as an honorary member. Earlier this year she was appointed to Sigma Xi's Committee on Publications. Since March 2003, she has been working from a home office in San Francisco.