More About Mary B. Woods
Mary B. Woods ([美] 玛丽·B·伍兹) is the researcher/archivist in the Woods-Woods co-authoring team. For each of their 50+ published works, Mary assembled a resource package with a focus on primary source material. Her handoff to Mike triggered the production process. This perfect example of the researcher-author collaboration explains the size of the Woods' publications list. Google AI in 2026 characterized it as "mega-prolific" in the publishing industry: "While tens of millions of people have published a single book, it is estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 living and historial authors have produced more than 50 published books." Google AI also noted that the Woods' were not full-time book authors, and had other resonsibilities. Among them were four children, fulltime jobs, and a prosperous freelance writing business.
Ms. Woods, a native of New Rochelle, N. Y., holds an undergraduate degree from St. Bonaventure University and a master's degree in library science from the Catholic University of America. She served for more than 20 years as library media specialist and technology specialist at schools in the Fairfax County Public School System. The Benjamin Franklin International School in Barcelona, Spain, recruited Ms. Woods as its librarian and media specialist. While living in Barcelona, she coordinated library instruction and resources for 400 students, and 55 faculty in two of the school's libraries.
Her professional activities include presentations at the "Writing and Publishing Non-Fiction Books for Children at the European Council of International Schools in Prague, Czech Republic; the Virginia Education Association conferences; an appearance as an author/expert on The History Channel's nationally broadcast television/video series "Inventions & Gadgets," and a presenter at the Smithsonian Institution's "Reading is Fundamental" program in Washington, DC.
Among her honors were three Society of School Librarians International Best Book Awards; the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Young Adult Top 40 Title Award; and an outstanding juvenile non-fiction award from the Society of Children's Book Authorsand Illustrators.
Ms. Woods is a member of The Authors' Guild. Her other memberships have included the National Association of Science Writers, the Society of Children's Book Authors & Illustrators, the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, the Virginia Educational Media Association, the American Library Association, and the Association of School Librarians of Fairfax County.
A long-time resident of Falls Church, VA, Ms. Woods has four children and seven grandchildren.
MORE ABOUT MICHAEL WOODS
During a 35-year newspaper career, Mr. Woods wrote more than 5,000 stories for The Toledo Blade, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and other newspapers in the Block News Alliance. Distributed to hundreds of additional news outlets by the former Scripps-Howard News Service, those stories reached millions of readers. Based in the company's Washington Bureau as science editor, Mr. Woods became a globetrotting correspondent who captivated readers with a "you-are-there" panache. He was on-the-scene in venues that ranged from the North Pole to the South Pole and included secret scientific installations in the former Soviet Union as one of the first Western journalists to set foot in these locales.
Mr. Woods later joined the Office of Public Affairs at the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. He became assistant director for science communications, introducing what then were innovations in online communications. These included formation of digital video unit for production of online content, use of social media to publicize science news, and introduction of the first press conferences broadcast live online among any major scientific society.
Teaming up with his wife, Mary, Mr. Woods co-authored more than 50 books for young readers that have been mainstays in libraries and schools in the United States and abroad. They have been published in foreign-language editions that include German, French, and Mandarin Chinese. In addition to books co-authored with his wife, Mr. Woods authored or co-authored other books on careers in science for individuals with disabilities, scientific research at the South Pole, and other topics. One was Cats in the Mouse House, a mystery/techno thriller that launched the Nicholas Drake novels, a series written in the spirit of Rex Stout's beloved Nero Wolfe detective novels and Michael Crichton's medicine and science blockbusters.
That work brought numerous accolades. Mr. Woods received an honorary doctorate degree from Bowling Green State University, for instance, for translating science into language understandable by non-scientists and pioneering science writing as a specialty field in journalism. The American Association for the Advancement of Science termed Woods' efforts in popularizing science "socially highly significant."
The Rockefeller Foundation named him a resident scholar at its scholarship center in Bellagio, Italy. Among other honors and writing awards were those from the American Chemical Society, the American Dental Association, the American College of Radiology, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Arthritis Foundation, the American Diabetes Association, the Hospital Council of California, the Associated Press of Ohio, the Ohio House of Representatives, the American College of Allergists, the American Chiropractic Association, American Society of Anesthesiologists, and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Mr. Woods was the unheralded journalist responsible for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism, awarded to a reporting team at the Toledo Blade. Mr. Woods, then in the newspaper's Washington Bureau, gave The Blade exclusive access to thousands of pages of classified military documents that came into his possession. Some involved previously undisclosed war crimes by U. S. troops during the war in Vietnam. A team of reporters at the newspaper launched an investigation, and landed the Pulitzer Prize.
Few journalists of the era traveled more extensively on science-related assignments. These took Mr. Woods, quite literally, from the North Pole to the South Pole. Woods joined three National Science Foundation expeditions to Antarctica, for instance, and reported from a U. S. Navy ice station near the North Pole.
In the 1980s, Mr. Woods wrote a story about the deplorable condition of health care in the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Minister of Health read it, and invited Woods for a first-hand look. That trip launched the first of a series of weeks-long visits to the country from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. Mr. Woods gained access to "closed areas" where even Soviet citizens were forbidden to visit. He witnessed launches from the Baikoniur Cosmodrome, the Soviet manned space center in Central Asia; stayed in Akademgorodok, the secret "Science City" that Stalin built in Siberia; and gained access to the area damaged in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He reported on a week of riding in Moscow with Russians doctor on the Skoraya Meditsinskaya Pomoshch, the municipal ambulance service, Russia's antiquated maternity and childbirth practices, and water pollution threats to Lake Baikal in Siberia. Mr. Woods joined several ancient Maya archaeological expeditions to the rainforests of Central American; wrote on-the-scenes accounts of the great drought and famine in Central Africa; and joined expeditions on scientific research vessels off the coasts of Japan and Antarctica.
Mr. Woods also wrote two nationally syndicated weekly newspaper columns, on health and personal technology that appeared in more than 150 newspapers. One, "The Computer Novice," was among the first personal technology columns to educate the public about the then-emerging digital revolution. Mr. Woods did extensive freelance writing, with clients that included the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, Time-Life Books, Encyclopaedia Britannica; World Book Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corporation, and scientific research institutions.
Michael Woods was born in 1946 in Dunkirk, N.Y., and found his career early through inspirational science and English teachers at Dunkirk High School. Unwilling to forsake either science or writing, he combined the two at St. Bonaventure University with a major in biology and a minor in journalism. Summer employment at the Dunkirk Evening Observer sharpened his aim on a career in science writing. Mr. Woods studied that topic on a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mr. Woods joined the Toledo Blade in 1969 as a science writer, became science editor in 1972, and was transferred to its Washington, DC, Bureau in 1978.
In 2001, when Mary was offered a job as librarian at an international school in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Woods finessed one of the first telecommuting arrangements, and worked from Europe for several years. When the Block News Alliance closed its Washington Bureau in 2003, Mr. Woods joined the American Chemical Society as a science writer. He became manager of science writing and then assistant director for science communications before leaving that position in 2013 due to an on-the-job injury.
He has been a member of the Authors' Guild, American Chemical Society, the National Science Teachers' Association, the American Public Health Association, the Internet Society, the National Association of Science Writers, the DC Science Writers' Association, the American Medical Writers Association, the Ohio Academy of Sciences (Fellow), the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Writers' Guild, the National Press Club, and the Woodworkers Guild of America. He was among the first journalists elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an honor reserved for individuals who have "produced a body of work on behalf of the advancement of science that is scientifically distinguished, socially highly significant, or both."
A long-time resident of Falls Church, VA, Mr. Woods has four children and seven grandchildren.