Peter Fairley (2 November 1930 – 5 August 1998) was a British science

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

who was the Science Editor for

Independent Television News Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based media production and broadcast journalism company. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington, D.C. I ...

and '' TV Times'' magazine the late sixties and early seventies. His name became synonymous with ITN's extensive live coverage of the

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

Moon landing missions. His daughter is Josephine Fairley, journalist, magazine editor and founder with her husband of Green & Black's chocolate company.

Biography

His father was a telecommunications engineer. He attended

Sutton Valence School Sutton Valence School (SVS) is a private school near Maidstone in southeast England. It has 560 pupils. It is a co-educational day and boarding school, boarding school. There are three senior boarding houses: Westminster, St Margaret's and Sutto ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

and

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge Sidney Sussex College (historically known as "Sussex College" and today referred to informally as "Sidney") is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. The College was founded in 1 ...

and he was then the science correspondent for the London ''

Evening Standard The ''London Standard'', formerly the ''Evening Standard'' (1904–2024) and originally ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), is a long-established regional newspaper published weekly and distributed free newspaper, free of charge in London, Engl ...

'' and made numerous radio broadcasts in the 1960s. In April 1961, while employed at the Evening Standard, Fairley, based on warnings sent to ships in the Pacific and a hunch, predicted in his column that the U.S.S.R. was about to launch its first crewed space flight. The column appeared on the front page of the paper, and two days later, Russia launched Yuri Gagarin into space. Fairley's salary was doubled as a result of his prediction. He was also a familiar face to ITV's younger viewers with regular appearances on ''

Magpie Magpies are birds of various species of the family Corvidae. Like other members of their family, they are widely considered to be intelligent creatures. The Eurasian magpie, for instance, is thought to rank among the world's most intelligent c ...

'' and the children's science fiction series ''

Timeslip ''Timeslip'' is a British children's television series, children's science fiction television series made by Associated TeleVision, ATV for the ITV (TV network), ITV network, and broadcast in 1970 and 1971. It was first shown on Monday evenings ...

'' as well as science articles in ITV's children's magazine ''

Look-in ''Look-in'' was a children's magazine centred on ITV's television programmes in the United Kingdom, and subtitled "The Junior '' TVTimes''". It ran from 9 January 1971 to 12 March 1994.cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

aged 67. Archive material collected by Fairley during his coverage of space missions became the basis of the Fairley Archive of Space Exploration (FASE)

Further biographical information from the cover of ''The Conquest of Pain''

Peter Fairley is Science Editor of Independent Television News, TV Times and Capital Radio. He has been reporting science and medicine for more than twenty years, and has written ten books. In 1968, he was chosen as Science Writer of the Year and awarded a Glaxo Travelling Fellowship; the award was used to finance the travelling needed to research this book. Peter Fairley calls pain "the most fascinating and possibly the most important subject I have ever tackled".

Bibliography

* ''Magpie's ABC of Space'', Independent Television Publications, 1969 * ''Man on the Moon'', Littlehampton Book Services, 1969 * ''Project X: the exciting story of British invention'', Mayflower Books 1970 * ''Peter Fairley's Space Annual'', 1970 * ''The Conquest of Pain'', 1978

Notes

* ''Peter Fairley of ITN fame is not to be confused with San Francisco and British Columbia-based science write
Peter Fairley
known for his ongoing writing on energy, technology and the environment. Fairley's reporting on political interference with U.S. energy research earned Covering Climate Now’s inaugura
award for investigative journalism
He was also a longtime member of the board of directors of the

Society of Environmental Journalists The Society of Environmental Journalists is a non-profit national journalism organization created by and for journalists who report environmental topics in the news media. On its website, the organization says that "SEJ’s mission is to strengt ...

.''

References

1930 births 1998 deaths British male journalists British reporters and correspondents People educated at Sutton Valence School Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge {{UK-tv-bio-stub