William E. Burrows, M.A.

The New York Times article Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma said

Cue the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, a group that advocates a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge — the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats. It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role as a new Noah.
 
Far from the lunatic fringe, the leaders of the alliance have serious careers: Robert Shapiro, the group’s founder, is a professor emeritus and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University; Ray Erikson runs an aerospace development firm in Boston and has been a NASA committee chair; Steven M. Wolfe, as a Congressional aide, drafted and helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, which mandated that NASA plan a shift from space exploration to space colonization, and was executive director of the Congressional Space Caucus; William E. Burrows, an author of several books on space, is the director of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at N.Y.U.

William E. Burrows, M.A. is cofounder of the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC), which seeks to move comprehensive data about Earth to a man-tended base off the planet to salvage civilization in the event of a near- or long-term catastrophe. He is also Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and Director of Science and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University. His major interests are air, space, and national security reporting.
 
Bill authored The Asteroid Threat: Defending Our Planet From Deadly Near-Earth Objects, The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth, The Alliance To Rescue Civilization: A Lunar Base For Planetary Defense, By Any Means Necessary: America’s Secret Air War, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security, Richthofen: A True History of the Red Baron and coauthored Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World.
 
In 2001, the minor planet #9930 was named Billburrows in his honor by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). He won the 1998 American Astronautical Society Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award for The New Ocean, was Contributing Editor for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine, won the 1992 Golden Dozen Teaching Award from New York University, the 1991 Aviation and Space Writers Association Premier Award for Space Coverage, and the 1977 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Service to Journalism Education.
 
Bill earned a B.A. (with honors) in Government in 1960 and a M.A. in International Relations in 1962, both from Columbia University. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York Academy of Sciences, and National Association of Science Writers.
 
Listen to him on Author’s Hour! Watch him at The 2004 Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids.