Philip Ball is a scientist, writer, and a long time contributor and editor at the journal Nature. He has won numerous awards and has published more than twenty-five books, most recently The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, From Animals to Aliens, The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination and The Beauty of Chemistry: Art, Wonder, and Science. He  writes on science for many magazines and journals internationally and is the contributing editor for Science at the Marginalia Review of Books.