News
Media Coverage
14 April 2022
As pizza popularity soars, chef and scientist share secrets from 12,000 pies
Inside a nondescript commercial office complex east of Seattle, an acclaimed professional chef and an ex-Microsoft tech executive have been quietly perfecting the art of pizza making and redefining possibilities for the perfect pie. Over the last three years, the chef, Francisco Migoya, and ex-exec, Nathan Myhrvold, have baked more than 12,000 pizzas and run 500 scientific experiments to produce what they call the definitive guide to one of the world's most popular foods.
14 December 2021
Geminid Meteor Shower: How to Watch It Peak in Night Skies
A picture by Nathan Myhrvold from the meteor shower in 2020 highlights how brilliant this winter sky show can be.
14 November 2021
Microsoft to “Modernist Cuisine:” A Deep Dive Into Pizza
Nathan Myhrvold spent 14 years climbing the ranks at Microsoft to become the company's first CTO—and then he left the tech world behind to pursue his dream of attending culinary school. He went on to found Modernist Cuisine, a research lab and publishing house exploring the cutting edge of cooking. Myhrvold discusses his latest series of books, which explore the history and science behind pizza.
22 October 2021
Tech titan Nathan Myhrvold and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart dish about pizza
When it comes to pizza, is there really anything new under the sun-dried tomatoes? Well, how about an all-black pizza, made with squid ink and black mozzarella? Or saffron pizza? Or a cheddar-apple-bacon pizza made with “Frankencheese”? Nathan Myhrvold, the techie/foodie who served as Microsoft’s first chief technology officer and founded Intellectual Ventures, laid out that menu today during an online chat with lifestyle guru Martha Stewart that focused on Myhrvold’s latest magnum opus, “Modernist Pizza.”
25 August 2021
Pizza In The United States Is What Convinced The World That Pizza Was A Great Thing
In today’s episode, we start by talking about one of Nathan’s biggest passions – food! He’s written two James Beard award-winning cookbooks and is coming out with a three volume, 1,700-page book about pizza later this year. We walk through the science, stories, culture, and history behind pizza and get his advice on how to make the perfect pizza. Then we discuss the state of innovation in the U.S. and how he thinks we can fight some of the world’s biggest problems like climate change and combatting diseases.
Press Releases
16 December 2013
Study Shows Some Dinosaur Growth Rates Lower Than Previously Thought
Nathan Myhrvold cautions against drawing unsupported conclusions from dinosaur growth data
30 September 2013
Climate change: fast out of the gate, slow to the finish
A new study by Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures concludes that about half of the warming occurs within the first 10 years after an instantaneous step increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, but about one-quarter of the warming occurs more than a century after the step increase. Their work is published in Environmental Research Letters.
16 February 2012
Only the lowest CO2 emitting technologies can avoid a hot end-of-century
Could replacing coal-fired electricity plants with generators fueled by natural gas bring global warming to a halt in this century? What about rapid construction of massive numbers of solar or wind farms, hydroelectric dams, or nuclear reactors—or the invention of new technology for capturing the carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fueled power plants and storing it permanently underground? Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures teamed up with Carnegie Institution’s Ken Caldeira to calculate the expected climate effects of replacing the world’s supply of electricity from coal plants with any of eight cleaner options.