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John Noble Wilford is an author and award-winning journalist for The New York Times.
Wilford's professional career began in 1956 at the Wall Street Journal, where he was a general assignment reporter and a medical reporter. In 1962, he joined Time to work as a contributing science editor, then moved in 1965 to The New York Times to be a science reporter. While at the NYT he also worked as assistant national news editor and director of science news.
Wilford wrote his newspaper's front-page article about man's first walk on the moon. 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." Upon the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Wilford's article was lauded by journalist Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. Dubner emphasized Wilford's skill in the use of data in his 1969 article. The data of which Dubner speaks is used in the following way by Wilford: "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. Forty-three years after the moon landing, it was Wilford's byline on the Times' front-page obituary of Neil Armstrong.
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