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Henry Fountain

Biography

Henry Fountain

Henry Fountain has been a reporter and editor at the New York Times for two decades, writing about science for most of that time. From 1999 to 2009, he wrote “Observatory,” a weekly column in the Science Times section. He was an editor on the national news desk and the Sunday Review and was one of the first editors of "Circuits," the Times' pioneering technology section. Prior to coming to the Times, Fountain worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris, New York Newsday and the Bridgeport Post in Connecticut. He is a graduate of Yale University, where he majored in architecture. He and his family live just outside of New York City.

Henry Fountain

Books by Henry Fountain

The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
by Henry Fountain - History, Nonfiction

At 5:36pm on March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2. earthquake --- the second most powerful in world history --- struck the young state of Alaska. The violent shaking, followed by massive tsunamis, devastated the southern half of the state and killed more than 130 people. A day later, George Plafker, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, arrived to investigate. His fascinating scientific detective work in the months that followed helped confirm the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics. With deep, on-the-ground reporting from Alaska, often in the company of George Plafker, Fountain shows how the earthquake left its mark on the land and its people --- and on science.