Seymour Topping was born on 11 December 1921 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Audrey Ronning. He died on 8 November 2020 in White Plains, New York, USA.
He was a New York Times editor, Pulitzer Prize administrator, and foreign correspondent who covered the Chinese Communist Revolution, the war in French Indochina, and the Cuban missile crisis.