David Shukman

Who is David Shukman?

David Roderick Shukman is Science Editor for BBC News.

His father was Harold Shukman, a Russian scholar at St Antony's College, Oxford, and his mother was a priest of The Church of England, and also a Russian scholar of writers such as Alexander Men. He has a younger brother and sister. He attended the Dragon School in Oxford, Eton College, then read Geography at Durham University, gaining a BA.

He worked at the Coventry Evening Telegraph from 1980–3 and joined the BBC in 1983. He was a Northern Ireland reporter from 1985–7, then the Defence Correspondent from 1987–95. From 1995–9 he was the European Correspondent, and broadening his coverage in 1999, he became the World Affairs Correspondent until 2003. In 2003, he became an Environment and Science Correspondent. In January 2012 he was appointed as the BBC's first science editor.

He married Jessica Pryce-Jones in August 1988 in Powys, Wales, and they have two sons and one daughter, Kitty.

He is of Jewish ancestry – his grandfather, whom he is named after, was part of the Jewish community who lived in Baranow, Poland, before emigrating and settling in the United Kingdom.