Philip Ball is a freelance writer, and was an editor for Nature for more than 20 years. Trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford, and as a physicist at the University of Bristol, he writes regularly in the scientific and popular media, and has authored books including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. He has been awarded the American Chemical Society’s Grady–Stack Award for interpreting chemistry to the public, and was the inaugural recipient of the Lagrange Prize for communicating complex science.
Brian Clegg read Natural Sciences, focusing on experimental physics, at the University of Cambridge. After developing hi-tech solutions for British Airways and working with creativity guru Edward de Bono, he formed a creative consultancy advising clients ranging from the BBC to the Met Office. He has written for Nature, the Times, and the Wall Street Journal and has lectured at Oxford and Cambridge universities and the Royal Institution. He is editor of the book review site www.popularscience.co.uk, and his own published titles include A Brief History of Infinity and How to Build a Time Machine.
Leon Clifford is a writer and a consultant whose speciality is simplifying complexity. Leon has a BSc in physics-with-astrophysics and is a member of the Association of British Science Writers. He worked for many years as a journalist covering science, technology and business issues with articles appearing in numerous publications including Electronics Weekly, Wireless World, Computer Weekly, New Scientist and the Daily Telegraph. Leon is interested in all aspects of physics – particularly climate science, astrophysics and particle physics.
Frank Close, OBE, is Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He was formerly Head of the Theoretical Physics Division, at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. His research is into the quark and gluon structure of nuclear particles, where he has published more than 200 papers in the peer-reviewed literature. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and of the British Institute of Physics, and won the society’s Kelvin Medal in 1996 for his outstanding contributions to the public understanding of physics. He is the author of many books including Neutrino – short-listed for the Galileo Prize in 2013 – the best selling Lucifer’s Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry and most recent The Infinity Puzzle.
Sophie Hebden is a freelance science writer based in Mansfield, UK. She combines writing about physics with looking after two small children. She has written for New Scientist and the Foundational Questions Institute, and is former news editor for SciDev.Net. She holds a PhD in space plasma physics, and a masters in science communication.
Alexander Hellemans is a science writer who has published articles in Science, Nature, Scientific American, BBC Focus, the Guardian, New Scientist, The Scientist, IEEE Spectrum, Chemical and Engineering News and other publications. With Bryan Bunch, Hellemans is the author of The History of Science and Technology: A Browser’s Guide to the Great Discoveries, Inventions and the People Who Made Them from the Dawn of Time to Today. Previously both authors wrote The Timetables of Science: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Science and The Timetables of Technology: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Technology.
Sharon Ann Holgate is a freelance science writer and broadcaster with a doctorate in physics. She has written for newspapers and magazines including New Scientist and Focus, and presented programmes for BBC Radio 4, a mini-series for the BBC World Service and video interviews for the Myrovlytis Trust. She was co-author of The Way Science Works, a children’s popular science book shortlisted for the 2003 Junior Prize in the Aventis Prizes for Science Books, and wrote the undergraduate textbook Understanding Solid State Physics. In 2006, Sharon Ann won Young Professional Physicist of the Year for her work communicating physics.
Andrew May is a technical consultant and freelance writer on subjects ranging from astronomy and quantum physics to defence analysis and military technology. After reading Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge in the 1970s, he went on to gain a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Manchester. Since then he has accumulated more than 30 years’ worth of diverse experience in academia, the scientific civil service and private industry.