Acknowledgements

This book began as an idea several years ago, and its writing has been informed and inspired by discussions with generous colleagues at London's Institute of Psychiatry ever since, for which we thank them. Our field, behavioral genetics, is developing at considerable speed and we look forward to continuing and extending those discussions in tandem with new developments in both genetics and education.

The writing of G is for Genes was made possible by funding from the British Academy in the form of a Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to KA, and our research into the school environment is funded by the US National Institutes of Health. We thank both bodies for believing in the importance of this endeavor.

We thank Peter Tallack of The Science Factory, and Professor Judy Dunn for their invaluable support and encouragement as we prepared to submit our draft manuscript for publication. Both contributed ideas which have made G is for Genes a better book, and both were a pleasure to work with. Thanks also to Nick Asbury for coming up with our title.

A particularly special thank you is owed to Jonah Asbury who helped in ways too numerous to mention but, in particular, we thank him for his generously given editorial advice which was always “on the money.” Finally, we thank the thousands of families who make up the Twins' Early Development Study (TEDS). We have dedicated our book to these families because, although we have become accustomed to their generosity, it really is astonishing that they find time in their busy lives to contribute to science and society on such a regular basis. They make our research possible and we are eternally grateful.