Carolyn Abraham

Carolyn was born in England and moved to Canada with her family in 1972. She became a founding editor of her high school newspaper and went on to study journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. In 1998 she joined the Globe and Mail as a medical reporter. Dolly, the famous Dorset sheep and first mammalian clone, was a newborn, and the Human Genome Project was about to produce its first map. As the Globe’s senior medical writer for 14 years, Carolyn has spent much of her career exploring the issues that make the area of DNA relevant to everyone. This work has earned her two National Newspaper Awards and four awards for medical reporting from the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. Carolyn has delved into the genomes of her own family to solve mysteries of her ancestry, an adventure documented in her national best seller, The Juggler’s Children. Her first book, Possessing Genius, which told the story of the man who took Einstein’s brain, was published in seven countries, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s prize for literary non-fiction. Carolyn also co-wrote the National Film Board’s production of DNA and Dollars, wrote the chapter on Canada’s 2003 SARS outbreak at the request of the World Health Organization, and appears often as a commentator on the social implications of scientific advances.