About Beverly Orndorff Books
Beverly Orndorff is a retired science writer for The Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he worked for 40 years. He covered the U.S. space program at Cape Canaveral, Houston and NASA-Langley, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo moon landing missions, the Space Shuttle program and the Mars-landing Project Viking. He also covered the earliest kidney, heart and liver transplants; the birth of the nation's first "test tube" baby and interviewed dozens of Nobel Prize winners and other world-class scientists. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. Orndorff is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where he majored in physics. His choice of physics as his major, and thus his subsequent career as a science writer, was partly influenced and abetted by several George Gamow books he read during high school. He was motivated to write a biography of Gamow because no complete biography of this important physicist currently exists. Awards and honors Orndorff has received for his writing include the American Heart Association's Howard W. Blakeslee Award; honorary life membership in the Virginia Academy of Science (the first non-scientist to be so recognized); distinguished service awards from the Virginia Academy of Science and the American Chemical Society's Virginia Division; the Virginia Mass Communications Hall of Fame, and first recipient of the Science Museum of Virginia's Beverly Orndorff Award for Exceptional Service to the Public Understanding of Science. In addition to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Orndorff's articles have appeared in state, regional and national publications, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Technology Review and Soaring Magazine. A collection of his science columns, Magical Acts, Hypercubes and Pi, was published by the Science Museum of Virginia in 1999. He has been an invited lecturer on science topics at local universities, retirement communities and other groups. His pastimes include flying sailplanes, for which he holds private, commercial and instructor's licenses, photography and writing.
