The Nieman class of 1941. First row: Nathan Caldwell, Alexander Kendrick, George Chaplin, William Pinkerton, Lowell Limpus, Harry Montgomery, John Crider. Second row: Ralph Werner, Boyd Simmons, Vance Johnson, Harry Davis, Arthur Eggleston, William Miller. Third row: Louis Lyons (Curator), Jerome Greene (Harvard Corporation), Arthur Wild (Director of Harvard Public Relations). Not pictured: Charles Edmundson, Fred Vanderschmidt.
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is pleased to announce the creation of the Harry M. Davis Nieman Fellowship in Science Journalism.
The fellowship is funded by a gift from an anonymous donor made on behalf of Ella (Davis) Mazel in memory of her brother, Harry M. Davis, a science journalist and a Nieman Fellow in the class of 1941.
Science journalists from both the United States and abroad are eligible for this fellowship opportunity at Harvard, which will be offered during the 2019-2020 academic year. The Davis Fellow will have access to the many schools, labs and research centers at the university and will join a cohort of some two dozen journalists from around the world in the Nieman class of 2020.
The fellow will receive a stipend for the year and have an opportunity to take classes at other local universities, including MIT and Tufts, and to interact with the robust scientific community based in and around Greater Boston.
Journalists who cover any science topic—from climate change and technology to health and medicine, artificial intelligence and beyond—may apply. Applications from international candidates are due Dec. 1, 2018; the deadline for U.S. applicants is Jan. 31, 2019. The application period for the class of 2020 will open in October 2018.
Harry M. Davis was a science editor at Newsweek magazine. He earned an engineering degree from Columbia University before serving in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. Before joining Newsweek, he was a Sunday feature and science writer for The New York Times. He wrote several army publications, among them an official history of radar development, and was the author of “Energy Unlimited: The Electron and Atom in Everyday Life.” Davis was regarded by scientists and science writers as a top authority in his field.
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard educates leaders in journalism and elevates the standards of the profession through special programs that convene scholars and experts in all fields. More than 1,500 journalists from 97 countries have been awarded Nieman Fellowships since 1938. The foundation’s other initiatives include Nieman Reports, a website and print magazine that covers thought leadership in journalism, Nieman Lab, a website that reports on the future of news, innovation and best practices in the digital media age, and Nieman Storyboard, a website that showcases exceptional narrative journalism and explores the future of nonfiction storytelling.
Contact: Nicole Arias, Nieman’s fellowship program administrator: (617) 495-2238; nicole_arias@harvard.edu.