John Joseph O'Neill (1889–1953), of the

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

, along with William L. Laurence of the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

Howard Blakeslee Howard Walter Blakeslee (March 21, 1880 - May 2, 1952) was an American journalist. He was the Associated Press's first full-time science reporter and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1937.''Who's who of Pulitzer Prize Winners'', El ...

of AP,

Gobind Behari Lal Gobind Behari Lal was an Indian-American journalist and independence activist. A relative and close associate of Lala Har Dayal, he joined the Ghadar Party and participated in the Indian independence movement. He arrived the United States on a sc ...

Universal Service Universal service is an economic, legal and business term used mostly in regulated industries, referring to the practice of providing a baseline level of services to every resident of a country. An example of this concept is found in the US Telec ...

and

David Dietz David David Henry Dietz (6 October 1897 Cleveland – 9 December 1984 Cleveland) was an American science journalist and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Dietz attended Case Western Reserve University and received his bachelor's degree in 1 ...

Scripps-Howard The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

, won the 1937

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

for Reporting "for their coverage of science at the

tercentenary An anniversary is the date on which an event took place or an institution was founded in a previous year, and may also refer to the commemoration or celebration of that event. The word was first used for Catholic feasts to commemorate saints. ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

." He was a self-taught journalist whose formal education did not go beyond public schooling. He is also the author of ''Prodigal genius; the life of Nikola Tesla'' (1944), which was published in 18 editions in German and English.WorldCat Identities
/ref> and several other non-technical books on 20th century science. In 1953 he observed a feature on the Moon, on the western shore of

Mare Crisium Mare Crisium (Latin ''crisium'', the "Sea of Crises") is a lunar mare located in the Moon's Crisium basin, just northeast of Mare Tranquillitatis. The basin is of the Pre-Imbrian period, 4.55 to 3.85 billion years ago. Characteristics Mare Cri ...

, which he interpreted as a giant natural bridge, but it turned out to be an illusion. Now this illusion is known as O'Neill's Bridge.

References

Pulitzer Prize for Reporting winners 1889 births 1953 deaths {{US-journalist-19thC-stub