Lonny LippsettManaging Editor, Oceanus Magazine |
|
|
In 1946, Dr. Herbert Lippsett, only brother of Dr. Murray Lippsett,
married Dr. Shirley Cohen, only sister of Dr. Jack Cohen, and they
begat Dr. Paula Lippsett and Dr. Stuart Lippsett. A few years later in
Brooklyn, N.Y., they begat Laurence Lippsett (nicknamed Lonny), whose
slots in a cradle and in medical school were simultaneously bestowed at
birth. But he was clearly a changeling, who delighted in words and
stories.
As an undergraduate at the University of Albany, he took all the requisite
pre-medical science courses, but completed his degree in an even more
arduous major: Not-Becoming-a-Doctor. After earning a master’s degree
in journalism at Columbia University in 1981, he worked at several
daily newspapers in Connecticut. But whenever stories with any science
angle popped up, editors scanned the newsroom for a reporter who
realized that some genes were stored in chromosomes, not closets, and
they tapped Lippsett.
After nine years as a reporter and editor, he
returned to Columbia and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to cover
science full time. He edited an oral history of Lamont-Doherty, taught
journalism at the University of Connecticut, and has written (and
ghost-written) for magazines such as Scientific American, Scholastic Science World, and Sea Technology.
In 1998, the currents of life brought him to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where a wealth of
fascinating people and research provides him with ample opportunities
to tell great stories and to convey the importance, excitement, and
poetry of science.
He lives in Falmouth with two teenage daughters and
his wife, a journalist with whom he once shared a newsroom desk and now
shares a home, a life, and an ongoing conversation sprinkled with
literary references and double entendres. His addictions include
reading, exercise, theater, and baseball.
Posted: July 25, 2005 [top] |
