Leonard Engel

Leonard Engel (June 2, 1916; New York, New York– December 1964) was an American journalist.

Engel was born in New York on June 2, 1916. He attended public and private schools before enrolling into and later graduating from Columbia University and the University of Chicago. When he turned 21, Engel joined the staff of Science Service, where he served as a n editor for a short period of time. Around the time when PM was founded, Engel became one of its columnists, and under a pen name of "The General" written many articles relating to military affairs.

After the end of World War II (at which he didn't participated due to poor eyesight), Engel became a freelance science writer. During his career, Engel had written over 400 articles on science and medicine for 50 magazines, among which were Collier's, Scientific American, The New York Times, and Harper's Magazines. He also was an editor of Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle and of the New Worlds of Modern Science. As a pharmacy journalist, Engel wrote a renown story about Upjohn Company entitled Medicine Makers of Kalamazoo. In 1960, while also serving as writer for NBC's Breakthrough, a science television series, Engel, as a seaman joined an Antartic cruise of the Vema, a research vessel of the Lamont Geological Laboratory of Columbia University. Under his own name, he wrote a book, titled The Operation and was in a process of completion The New Genetics, when he died at the age of 48 in 1964.

• George Polk Memorial Award
• Member of the National Association of Science Writers