As part of George Mason University's 50th anniversary celebration, we are recognizing some of the Mason Trailblazers—faculty, staff, students, and alumni—who helped put Mason on the map. Each week we will be featuring one member of the Mason Nation who helped make a difference in our community and beyond.
Robinson Professor of Physics James Trefil is a huge proponent of science literacy and has written extensively about science for a lay audience, including more than 50 books. With his colleague, Robinson Professor of Earth Science Robert Hazen, Trefil created and taught the popular PROV 301 Great Ideas in Science, a class for nonscience majors that introduces ideas that have shaped the field, from the building of Stonehenge to the Big Bang. The textbook they created for this course, "The Sciences: An Integrated Approach," is in its ninth edition and is used at hundreds of universities around the country.