Donald McNeil, Jr.

Donald Gerard McNeil Jr. (born February 1, 1954 San Francisco, California) is a science and health journalist for the New York Times.

He graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in rhetoric. He started at the Times in 1976 as a copy boy. He left in 1979 to teach journalism at Columbia University while studying history. From 1995 to 2002, he was a foreign correspondent based in South Africa and France. In 2013, he was featured in an acclaimed documentary about AIDS drugs, Fire In the Blood.

He lives in Brooklyn. He has two daughters and a stepson.