Joel Achenbach writes on science and politics for the Post's national desk. He has been a staff writer for The Washington Post since 1990, started the newsroom’s first online column, "Rough Draft," in 1999, and started washingtonpost.com’s first blog, Achenblog, in 2005. He has been a regular contributor to National Geographic since 1998, writing on such topics as dinosaurs, particle physics, earthquakes, extraterrestrial life, megafauna extinction and the electrical grid. A 1982 graduate of Princeton University, he has taught journalism at Princeton and Georgetown University.
