About the Author

John Noble Wilford is a science correspondent for The New York Times. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes—one in 1984 for his reporting on space science, and the other in 1987 as a member of the Times team reporting on the aftermath of the Challenger accident. He was the McGraw Lecturer at Princeton University in 1985, and Professor of Science Journalism at the University of Tennessee in 1989-90. In 1998, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in New York.