Courtesy The New Republic

John Tierney is the co-author, with Roy F. Baumeister, of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (Penguin Press), which has been translated into 19 languages. It was named one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011. He writes the Findings science column for the New York Times. 

During more than two decades at the Times, Mr. Tierney was a reporter and columnist. He wrote about New York in a column, The Big City, which ran in the Times Magazine and in the Metro section from 1994 to 2002. While based in Washington, he wrote the Political Points column and then wrote a column the Op-Ed page before returning to New York in 2007 to begin the Findings column, which continues to appear in the Tuesday science section.

Mr. Tierney is also the author of The Best-Case Scenario Handbook (Workman Publishing), which explains, among other things, how to deal with a broken ATM spewing cash, how to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and even how to cope with a polite teenage child. He is the co-author, with Christopher Buckley, of the comic novel, God Is My Broker: A Monk Tycoon Reveals the 7 ½ Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth (Random House). It is a parody of self-help books.

Prior to joining the Times, Mr. Tierney was a contributing editor to Discover and Health magazines, a staff writer at Science 81-85 magazine, a reporter for the Washington Star and the Bergen Record, and a freelance writer for many magazines. His reporting took him to six continents and won awards from American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics and the New York Publishers Association.

He has been a Poynter Fellow at Yale and a media fellow at the Freedom Forum at Columbia University. He graduated in 1976 from Yale University, where he majored in American Studies.  He was an editor of the Yale Daily News Magazine.