Alan Light­man, trained as a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, is the author of six nov­els, includ­ing The Diag­no­sis, a final­ist for the Nation­al Book Award. He is also the author of three col­lec­tions of essays and sev­er­al books on sci­ence. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Gran­ta, Harper’s Mag­a­zine, The New York­er, The New York Review of Books, and Nature, among oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. He has taught at Har­vard and at MIT, where he was the first per­son to receive a dual fac­ul­ty appoint­ment in Sci­ence and the Human­i­ties. He lives in the Boston area.