Seymour Topping was appointed Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and Professor of Journalism in Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism on November 1, 1993 after serving 34 years with The New York Times Company as a reporter and editor. In December 1994, he was appointed Sanpaolo Professor of International Journalism. Apart from his Pulitzer duties, he conducts seminars on Covering the Post-Cold War World.

In 1959, when Seymour Topping joined The Times, he already had 13 years' experience as a foreign correspondent. After serving as an infantry officer in the Pacific in World War II, he was stationed in Peking in 1946 as a correspondent for the International News Service covering the Chinese civil war. In 1948 he joined The Associated Press in Nanking, capital of Nationalist China, and was the first correspondent to report the fall of the city in 1949 to the Communists. After the Communist occupation he continued to report from Nanking for six months. In 1950 and 1951, he was chief of the AP staff covering the war in French Indochina. He went to London in 1952 where he covered the Foreign Office and in 1956 was appointed chief of bureau in Berlin remaining there until 1959 when he joined The New York Times.

After serving on The Times' metropolitan staff, he became chief Moscow correspondent (1960- 63); chief correspondent for Southeast Asia (1963-66); Foreign Editor (1966-69); Assistant Managing Editor (1969-76); Deputy Managing Editor (1976); Managing Editor (1977-86); and editorial director of the company's 32 regional newspapers( 1987-93).

In 1992-93, Topping served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and currently serves on the board of the American Committee of the International Press Institute; the National Advisory Committee of the Media Studies Center of the Freedom Forum and the Board of Advisors to the Center for Foreign journalists. He is also a director of the Center for Independent Journalism, which conducts training programs in Eastern Europe, a member of the Program Committee of the American Ditchley Foundation and the advisory board of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the advisory board of its Center for Preventive Action, and also is a member of the Asia Society, the National Committee on United States-China Relations and the Century Association.

Topping was born in New York on December 11, 1921. He is a graduate of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri and received its Distinguished Service Award in 1968 and the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1993. He also holds an honorary doctor of letters from Rider College, Lawrenceville, N.J. He is the author of Journey Between Two Chinas, published in 1972 by Harper & Row, and of The Peking Letter, A Novel of the Chinese Civil War, which will be published in September by PublicAffairs. He is married to Audrey Topping, author and photojournalist.