AAAS Science Journalism Awards

2002 RECIPIENTS

Michael Specter

Michael Specter, who writes about science and technology, has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since September 1998. He came to The New Yorker from The New York Times, where he had been a roving correspondent based in Rome covering topics as varied as Michaelangelo's Florentine Pietà and the spread of AIDS in Africa. In 1995, he was appointed co-chief of the Times Moscow bureau, and while in Russia he covered the war in Chechnya, the 1996 Russian presidential elections, and the declining state of Russian health care among other stories. Specter came to the Times from the Washington Post, where, from 1985 to 1991, he had covered local news before becoming the Post's national science reporter, and finally, the paper's New York bureau chief.

Specter received a B.A. from Vassar College. He lives in New York with his wife, Alessandra Stanley, a reporter for The New York Times, and their daughter, Emma.