John Noble Wilford | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 4, 1933 Murray, Kentucky |
| Occupation | Journalist, author |
| Citizenship |  United States |
| Alma mater | University of Tennessee, Syracuse University |
| Genre | Science journalism |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize (1984) Carl Sagan Award for Public Appreciation of Science (2001) |
John Noble Wilford (born October 4, 1933 [1] ) is an author and science journalist for The New York Times .
Wilford was born October 4, 1933, in Murray, Kentucky, and attended Grove High School across the border in nearby Paris, Tennessee. [1] After graduating from high school, he attended Lambuth College for a year before transferring to University of Tennessee in the fall of 1952. [1] He received a B.S. in journalism from UT in 1955 and an M.A. in political science from Syracuse University in 1956. [2] After completing his master's degree, Wilford spent two years with the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps in West Germany. [1]
Wilford's professional career began at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was a summer reporter in 1954 and 1955. He briefly served as a general assignment reporter at The Wall Street Journal in 1956. Following his military service, he was a medical reporter at the Journal from 1959 to 1961. [1] In 1962, he held an Advanced International Reporting Fellowship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. That year, he also joined Time as a contributing editor specializing in science before moving in 1965 to The New York Times to be a science reporter (1965–1973) and science correspondent (1979–2008). [1] [3] While at the NYT he also worked as assistant national news editor (1973–1975) and director of science news (1975–1979).
In 1969, he wrote the newspaper's front-page article about the Apollo 11 landing. His was the only byline on the front page, beneath the headline "Men Walk On Moon" and under the subheading "A Powdery Surface is Closely Explored." [4] On the 40th anniversary of the mission, Wilford's article was lauded by journalist Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics , who emphasized Wilford's skillful use of data. For example, Wilford wrote, "Although Mr. Armstrong is known as a man of few words, his heartbeats told of his excitement upon leading man's first landing on the moon. At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute—77 is normal for him—and it shot up to 156 at touchdown." Dubner argues that this is one of the most elegant uses of data to have been ever used in journalism. [5] In the 2010s, Wilford's name was the only byline on the newspaper's front-page obituaries of Neil Armstrong and John Glenn.
Wilford received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for work on "scientific topics of national import". He also contributed to the staff entry that received a 1987 National Reporting Pulitzer for coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and its implications. He has also won the G.M. Loeb Achievement Award from the University of Connecticut, the National Space Club Press Award and two awards from the Aviation-Space Writers Association. [2] He was the 2008 recipient of the University of Tennessee's Hileman Distinguished Alumni Award. [6]
The following is a partial bibliography:
The Medill School of Journalism is the journalism school of Northwestern University. It offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It frequently ranks as the top school of journalism in the United States. Medill alumni include over 40 Pulitzer Prize laureates, numerous national correspondents for major networks, many well-known reporters, columnists and media executives. Founded in 1921, it is named for publisher and editor Joseph Medill.
Charles Stark "Doc" Draper was an American scientist and engineer, known as the "father of inertial navigation". He was the founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Instrumentation Laboratory, later renamed the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, which made the Apollo Moon landings possible through the Apollo Guidance Computer it designed for NASA.
Joseph Anthony Lewis was an American public intellectual and journalist. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and was a columnist for The New York Times. He is credited with creating the field of legal journalism in the United States.
Charlie Savage is an American author and newspaper reporter with The New York Times. In 2007, when employed by The Boston Globe, he was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. He writes about national security legal policy, including presidential power, surveillance, drone strikes, torture, secrecy, leak investigations, military commissions, war powers, and the U.S. war on terrorism prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is a daily newspaper, located in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1925 as the Sarasota Herald.
Rick Bragg is an American journalist and writer known for non-fiction books, especially those about his family in Alabama. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 recognizing his work at The New York Times.
Wendell Lee Rawls Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and editor. His career spans 40 years in journalism and media, beginning in 1967 at The (Nashville) Tennessean.
The Pulitzer Prize is awarded to the best in journalism and the arts for pieces of exceptional quality. In 1984, the recipients were:
Nan C. Robertson was an American journalist, author and instructor in journalism. Her awards included a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
Robert Dennis McFadden is an American journalist who worked for The New York Times from 1961 to 2024. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996.
Walter Seager Sullivan, Jr. was considered the "dean" of science writers.
Claude Fox Sitton was an American newspaper reporter and editor. He worked for The New York Times during the 1950s and 1960s, known for his coverage of the civil rights movement. He went on to become national news director of the Times and then editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
David Barstow is an American journalist and professor. While a reporter at The New York Times from 1999 to 2019, Barstow was awarded, individually or jointly, four Pulitzer Prizes, becoming the first reporter in the history of the Pulitzers to be awarded this many. In 2019, Barstow joined the faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as a professor of investigative journalism.
Charles Duhigg is an American journalist and non-fiction author. He was a reporter for The New York Times. He currently writes for The New Yorker Magazine and is the author of three books on habits and productivity, titled The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Smarter Faster Better and Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. In 2013, Duhigg was the recipient, as part of a team of New York Times reporters, of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of ten articles on the business practices of Apple and other technology companies.
Ken Armstrong is a senior investigative reporter at ProPublica.
Alan C. Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and the founder of the News Literacy Project, a national education nonprofit that works with educators and journalists to offer resources and tools that help middle school and high school students learn to separate fact from fiction. In 2020, NLP expanded its audience to include people of all ages.
Gilbert Martin Gaul is an American journalist. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes and been a finalist for four others.
Don Whitehead was an American journalist. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom. He won the 1950 George Polk Award for wire service reporting.
Gobind Behari Lal was an Indian-American journalist and independence activist. A relative and close associate of Lala Har Dayal, he joined the Ghadar Party and participated in the Indian independence movement. He arrived the United States on a scholarship to study at the University of California, Berkeley. Later, he worked as a science editor for the Hearst Newspapers. In 1937, he became the first Indian to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Gene Swann Graham was an American journalist and educator who was associated for many years with the Nashville Tennessean and with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He was a co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1962.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
