Amy Shira Teitel American Journalist From Toronto

Early life

Amy Shira Teitel was born on 7 March 1986 in Toronto. Her studies centred on the history of science and technology. She earned a bachelor's degree in the history of science at the University of King's College in Halifax, spent time at Dalhousie University, and later completed a master's degree in science and technology studies at York University. The research she did for her master's thesis became the basis of her first book.

Career

Teitel works as a science and space historian, writer and video creator. Her articles have appeared in The Daily Beast, National Geographic, Discovery News, Scientific American, Ars Technica and Al Jazeera English.

Her first book, Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA, was published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Sigma. It follows American rocketry from its early pioneers in the late 1920s up to the creation of NASA, covering the years before the agency existed. Her second book, Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight, appeared in 2020 from Grand Central Publishing. It is a double biography of the aviators Jacqueline Cochran and Jerrie Cobb and the separate efforts each made to open spaceflight to women. In August 2025 she announced a third book, on the history of the atomic bomb, with publication expected in 2027.

In 2012 she started a YouTube channel called The Vintage Space, where she examines the history of spaceflight. The channel went quiet from 2021 to 2024. Teitel has said the break followed the release of her second book and was also connected to difficulties with comments on the platform and with demonetisation over copyright claims. When she resumed posting in July 2024, she explained that the channel would cover the wider space age, not only spaceflight itself. By October 2025 the channel counted about 447,000 subscribers, and she also runs a smaller second YouTube channel with roughly 55,000.

Alongside her own channel, Teitel was a co-host on DNews, the online channel of Discovery Channel that was later renamed Seeker. She has also appeared in cable documentary programmes, including Ancient Aliens and NASA's Unexplained Files.

Recognition

Her main published works are the two books above, with Fighting for Space listed among her notable works. No specific awards are recorded for her in the sources used for this profile.