John Barbour (1928-2004) was an American science journalist born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who spent most of his career at the Associated Press, working there for more than forty years, first in Michigan and then at the New York headquarters. As the agency's space writer, he covered the major crewed missions, from Alan Shepard's flight (1961) to Apollo 13 (1970). Footprints on the Moon (1969), drawn from the agency's coverage, is the better known of his two books; he also wrote In the Wake of the Whale, on the endangered blue whale. He retired in 1996.