Quick Facts
Biography
David Roderick Shukman (born 30 May 1958, St Pancras, London, England) is Science Editor for BBC News.
Background
His father was Harold Shukman, a Russian scholar at St Antony's College, Oxford, and his mother was also a Russian scholar of writers such as Alexander Men (a Russian theologian). He has a younger brother and sister. He attended the Dragon School in Oxford, Eton College, then read Geography at Durham University (Hatfield College), gaining a BA.
Work History
He worked at the Coventry Evening Telegraph from 1980 to 1983 when he joined the BBC. He was a Northern Ireland reporter from 1985 to 1987 (at a turbulent time in Northern Ireland's history), then the Defence Correspondent (TV) from 1987 to 1995. From then until 1999 he was the European Correspondent, and broadening his coverage in 1999, he became the World Affairs Correspondent until 2003, when he became an environment and science correspondent. In January 2012 he was appointed as the BBC's first science editor.
Personal life
He married Jessica Pryce-Jones in August 1988 in Powys, Wales, and they have two sons (born December 1989 and April 1992) and one daughter, Kitty (born November 1994).
He is of Jewish ancestry – his grandfather, whom he is named after, was part of the Jewish community who lived in Baranow, Poland, before emigrating and settling in the United Kingdom.
Books
- Brown, Ben and Shukman, David, All Necessary Means : Inside the Gulf War, 1994
- Shukman, David, The Sorcerer's Challenge: Fears and Hopes for the Weapons of the Next Millennium, 1996
- Shukman, David, Tomorrow's War: The Threat of High-Technology Weapons, 1996
- Shukman, David, Reporting Live from the End of the Word. Profile Books, 2010.
- Shukman, David, Reporting Live from the End of the World , 2011
- Shukman, David, An Iceberg As Big As Manhattan, 2011