Will Francis, his agent at Janklow & Nesbit, said: “From age 16, leaping from a launch onto the gangway of a heaving cruise ship as it came into Auckland’s harbour to interview Robert Mitchum, to patrician science journalist, father figure to a whole generation of writers, Tim never lost his extraordinary combination of perspicacity and intellectual humility.
Tim Radford, the Guardian’s former science editor and mentor to a generation of writers who followed in his footsteps, has died aged 84.
Claire Armitstead, a former literary editor at the Guardian, said: “Tim was the best sort of journalist: infinitely inquisitive and excited by the hugeness and variety of the universe, and indulgent of those who lacked his ability to comprehend it.”.
“He could talk as easily to Nobel laureates as he could undergraduates, and he could make any subject, however obscure, seem fascinating,” said Chris Mihill, a former medical correspondent at the Guardian.
He worked as the letters editor, arts editor and literary editor before becoming the science editor in 1992.
