Robert Lee Hotz for many years covered new research and its impact on society for The Wall Street Journal.
He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1986 for his Atlanta Journal-Constitution coverage of the legal, moral and social impacts of genetic engineering, and again in 2004 for his coverage at The Los Angeles Times of the space shuttle Columbia accident. Hotz shared in The Los Angeles Times’ 1995 Pulitzer Prize for articles about the Northridge Earthquake.
A graduate of Tufts University, Hotz was president of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. For 15 years, he was also a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
His reporting received national awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Academies of Science, and the American Geophysical Union. In covering planetary change, he has traveled widely across Antarctica and the Arctic, including four trips to the South Pole. Hotz’s TED Talk on Antarctica has been viewed 660,000 times. He is the author of a 1991 book on human embryo research called “Designs On Life,” and a contributor to several books on research issues.