In 1947, Flanagan, a former editor of Life magazine, and two friends bought the magazine Scientific American, which at the time had a circulation of 40,000.
As its new editor, he made a few changes. First, he dictated that the people doing research should be the primary authors of articles in the magazine, and second, the published articles should be readable by people other than scientists. He recruited scientists like James D. Watson, Hans Bethe, Linus Pauling, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Albert Einstein to write articles, and then edited them so they were readable by a lay audience. He also ran book reviews. He hired Martin Gardner to create fun but interesting puzzles.
“He had a tremendous influence on science journalism,” says Leon Jaroff, former science editor at Time magazine. “Before, much of science journalism was largely incomprehensible to the layperson.” By the time he retired in 1984, circulation was up to 600,000, exceeding many popular general interest magazines. He died at home an January 11 from prostate cancer. He was 85.