John Noble Wilford
John Noble Wilford was an editor and reporter at the New York Times since 1965, first specializing in coverage of space exploration (mainly the Apollo Moon Project). He was director of science news when the weekly section, Science Times, was started in 1978. Before joining The Times in 1965, Wilford worked for The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. In later years his reporting concentrated on space science and astronomy, archaeology and paleontology, that is, the long ago and far away. His coverage of all the Apollo missions for The Times won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for articles on science and planetary exploration, and in 1987 he shared another Pulitzer with colleagues for coverage of the aftermath of the space shuttle Challenger disaster. He was the author of We Reach the Moon, The Mapmakers, Mars Beckons, The Mysterious History of Columbus, and co-author or editor of other books, including Cosmic Dispatches.