Richard Harris, NPR Biography
Correspondent, Science Desk
Award-winning journalist Richard Harris reports on science issues for NPR's newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Harris, who joined NPR in 1986, has traveled to the ends of the earth for NPR, reporting from Timbuktu, the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Beijing during the SARS epidemic, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest, and the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (for a story about tuberculosis).
In 2002, Harris was elected an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. In 1999, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents bestowed on him the Sagan Award for improving the public understanding of science. That same year, he also was given the American Medical Writers Association's Walter C. Alvarez Memorial Award. In 1995, he earned the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Whitaker Science Journalism Award for his coverage of endocrine disrupters.
Also in 1995, Harris shared a Peabody Award for investigative reporting about the tobacco industry. He also won the 1994 Aviation/Space Writers Association Gold Award for his coverage of the first Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. In 1994 Harris received the Cindy Award from the Association of Visual Communicators for a story on the ecological impact of alien species coming to North America.
In 1992 Harris was awarded the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory's Lewis Thomas Award for coverage of the life sciences. In 1991 he was presented with the IEEE/USA Activities Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession.
Harris collaborated with several colleagues on NPR's 1989 series "AIDS in Black America," which won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, a first place award from the National Association of Black Journalists, and an Ohio State Award.
In 1988, Harris won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award for his report, "Anti-Noise: Can Technology Turn Noise into Quiet?" which explored a revolutionary technology that uses computer-generated noise to cancel out, not just mask, unwanted noise.
Before joining NPR, Harris was a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From 1981 to 1983, Harris was a staff writer at The Tri-Valley Herald in Livermore, California, covering science, technology, and health issues. Under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harris spent the summer of 1980 as a Mass Media Science Fellow reporting on science issues for The Washington Star, in Washington, D.C.
Harris is co-founder of the Washington, DC, Area Science Writers Association, as well as past president of the National Association of Science Writers.
A California native, Harris was valedictorian of his college graduating class at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. He earned his bachelor's degree in biology, with highest honors.
