Biography

One of America's most honored science writers, Andrew C. Revkin has spent two decades covering subjects ranging from the Asian tsunami to the assault on the Amazon, from the loss of the space shuttle Columbia to the changing Arctic climate. He has been an environment reporter for The New York Times since 1995, a position that has taken him to the Arctic three times since 2003. In 2003 he became the first Times reporter to file stories and photographs from the floating sea ice around the North Pole. His recent string of Times stories revealing efforts by political appointees to rewrite government climate reports and limit media access to climate scientists triggered reviews of communications policies at a dozen government agencies and was followed by two resignations.

His coverage of climate change won the inaugural National Academies Communication Award for print journalism, presented by the National Academy of Sciences, the United States' preeminent scientific body. He has twice won the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, along with other prizes, has won an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award.

Mr. Revkin has written several books, most recently The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World (Kingfisher, 2006), the first book on Arctic and global climate change for the whole family. In a rare double win, the book was named an Outstanding Science Book of 2006 by the Children's Book Council and National Science Teachers Association and a Notable Social Studies book of the year by the CBC and National Council for the Social Studies. He is also author of The Burning Season (new edition Island Press, 2004) which was awarded the Sidney Hillman Foundation Book Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (second prize) and was the basis for HBO's award-winning film of the same name, starring the late Raul Julia.

He has a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship to help him prepare his next book, on the evolving human relationship with the home planet.

Mr. Revkin also writes occasionally about music, and his 1997 Times profile of a heavy-metal singer was the basis for "Rock Star," a 2001 Warner Bros. film starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston. He has a biology degree from Brown and a masters in journalism from Columbia. Mr. Revkin has taught at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and Bard College and written two book chapters on the media and the environment.

In spare moments, Mr. Revkin is a performing songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He often accompanies Pete Seeger at regional shows and is part of Uncle Wade, a folk-blues-country quartet (myspace.com/unclewade). He lives on a dirt road in the Hudson Valley with his wife, Lisa Mechaley, a science teacher and naturalist, and has two sons.