Jon Hamilton
Jon Hamilton is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. Currently he focuses on neuroscience and health risks.
In 2014, Hamilton went to Liberia as part of the NPR team that covered Ebola. The team received a Peabody Award for its coverage.
Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Hamilton was part of NPR's team of science reporters and editors who went to Japan to cover the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Hamilton contributed several pieces to the Science Desk series "The Human Edge," which looked at what makes people the most versatile and powerful species on Earth. His reporting explained how humans use stories, how the highly evolved human brain is made from primitive parts, and what autism reveals about humans' social brains.
In 2009, Hamilton received the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for his piece on the neuroscience behind treating autism.
Before joining NPR in 1998, Hamilton was a media fellow with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation studying health policy issues. He reported on states that have improved their Medicaid programs for the poor by enrolling beneficiaries in private HMOs.
From 1995-1997, Hamilton wrote on health and medical topics as a freelance writer, after having been a medical reporter for both The Commercial Appeal and Physician's Weekly.
Hamilton graduated with honors from Oberlin College in Ohio with a Bachelor of Arts in English. As a student, he was the editor of the Oberlin Review student newspaper. He earned his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors. During his time at Columbia, Hamilton was awarded the Baker Prize for magazine writing and earned a Sherwood traveling fellowship.
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FDA advisers are set to review an Alzheimer's drug found to slow the disease's progress in patients in the early stages. The big questions are about how the drug should be marketed.
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A new genetic analysis could help explain why people in the U.S. with African ancestry face a greater risk for stroke and Alzheimer's disease, but less risk of another brain disease, Parkinson's.
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When Amylyx Pharmaceuticals found out its ALS drug Relyvrio didn't work, the company took the unusual step of voluntarily pulling it off the market. -
Scientists have imaged a tiny fragment of brain in unprecedented detail, showing detailed connections between individual neurons. The method could help researchers better understand brain circuits.
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A drug company will voluntarily stop selling a medicine that was bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, keeping a promise the business made years earlier to people with the fatal condition ALS.
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A therapy that restores brain cells impaired by a rare genetic disorder may offer a strategy for treating conditions like autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. -
Researchers have been able to reverse the effects of a syndrome that affects brain development in a brain organoid. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on April 24, 2024.)
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Researchers have been able to reverse the effects of a syndrome that affects brain development in a brain organoid.
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When siblings share a womb, sex hormones from a male fetus can cause lasting changes in a female littermate. This effect exists for all kinds of mammals — perhaps humans too. -
A sibling can change your life — potentially even before birth. The sex of one fetus can affect its neighbors in the womb. The "intrauterine position effect" was first discovered in cattle farming.
