H. R. (Hubert Renfro) Knickerbocker

Born in Yoakum, Texas, in 1898, Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker studied at Southwestern University and later at Columbia before building a career in journalism. He worked as a foreign correspondent in Europe and wrote for major American newspapers and wire services, developing a reputation for energetic, on-the-ground reporting.

Knickerbocker is best remembered for winning the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for his articles on how the Soviet Union's Five-Year Plan worked in practice. He also reported extensively from Germany and other parts of Europe during the turbulent years leading up to World War II, turning fast-moving political events into books and articles for a broad American audience.

His surviving papers at Columbia University show the range of his work: correspondence, notebooks, clippings, interviews, and dispatches from abroad. He died in 1949 in an air crash near Bombay while traveling with a group of American journalists, ending a career built on going where the story was hottest.