A. M. Rosenthal

He was born in the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and came to the United States with his family when he was a small boy. He attended public schools in New York and then City College.

He says he floundered around until he was about eighteen and then one day walked into the office of the college newspaper, The Campus, a four-page weekly. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. He became editor of the paper, which led to a job as college correspondent for The Times.

While he was a senior in college he got a job as a reporter on the staff of The Times and quit college at once. It took him about six years to make up the remaining credits and get his degree.

For two years, Rosenthal was a general assignment reporter in New York. Then, in 1945, he was assigned, on a two-week fill-in basis, to The Times bureau at the brand-new United Nations. The two weeks stretched on a bit -- to nine years. The U.N. developed in him a lust for foreign affairs and foreign places.

In 1954 he was assigned to India. He roamed about India, Pakistan Nepal, Afghanistan and Ceylon for the next four years, with assignments to other places such as New Guinea and Vietnam.

The next assignment was Poland, in 1958. He lasted there a year and a half until he was expelled for "probing into the internal affairs" of the country and the Communist Party.

In 1960 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Poland.

After Poland came assignments in Switzerland and Africa, including a stint covering the Congo war. Japan followed, an assignment that lasted until The Times called him back to become Metropolitan Editor in 1963.

He then became assistant managing editor, associate managing editor, managing editor in 1969 and executive editor in 1977.

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Rosenthal formally retired from The Times on Jan. 1, 1988, but continues as a columnist for the paper.

He has written two books and a hundred magazine articles. In addition to the Pulitzer, he has won several Overseas Press Club awards, Front Page prizes and a variety of other awards, degrees and decorations, including a special citation from the American Dairy Goat Association, which hangs on his wall.