John Noble Wilford in 1955. (Wikipedia.)
Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter John Noble Wilford died on Dec. 8. Raised in western Kentucky, Wilford spent much of his career writing for the New York Times, best known for his science reporting and especially his insights about the space program during NASA’s heroic Apollo and space-shuttle eras. He won the Pulitzer for his science reporting in 1984, and was part of a team that earned a second Pulitzer in 1987. The extent to which Knoxville can claim him may be limited—it’s been about 70 years since he lived here full-time. But the fact that he was on the Hill as a UT undergraduate from 1952 to 1955 is intriguing. His degree was in journalism, but it’s not unlikely he occasionally shared a classroom with some other aspiring writers of future national repute, including novelists David Madden, Richard Marius, and fellow Pulitzer laureate Cormac McCarthy. It would be fascinating to learn what was going on up on the Hill in the early 1950s.
Wilford also earned a degree at Syracuse and a fellowship at Columbia, but expressed his interest in UT by returning several times to speak—he was commencement speaker at least three times between 1981 and 2014, and in 1989-90 he held a chair at UT’s journalism school that involved several responsibilities here.
J.N. – December 2025
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