Gregory Thurston Pope ’80

Gregory died in New York City May 12, 1996, of a ruptured brain aneurysm.

He was a science writer and the editor of Discover magazine's Internet site. Friends and classmates subsequently endowed the Gregory T. Pope '80 Prize for Science Writing, administered by the University's Council on Science and Technology and awarded to a graduating senior each year.

Greg was born in Oxford, England, in 1959 and graduated with honors from St. Albans School in Washington in 1976, where he was editor of the school newspaper in his senior year. His Princeton degree was in biology.

After doing editorial work in New York for a publisher and a law firm, Greg earned a master's in journalism from New York University. As a freelance writer, he published feature and cover articles for magazines such as Omni, Discover, Popular Mechanics, and Science World. He became the science and technology editor of Popular Mechanics in 1993, a post he held until November 1995 when he moved to Discover.

A man with wide interests and an acute sense of the comic and the absurd, Greg was a passionate animal (and insect) lover, and a loyal friend.

At the time of his death, Greg was survived by his parents, Michael and Ann Pope; a sister, Lucy; and his grandmother, Mary Pope.

The Class of 1980