Michael Riordan is Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Lecturer in Stanford University’s History and Philosophy of Science Program. He is the author of “The Hunting of the Quark” (Simon & Schuster, 1987) and the coauthor (with Lillian Hoddeson) of “Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age” (W.W. Norton, 1997), which was awarded the 1999 Sally Hacker Prize of the Society for the History of Technology. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, he received a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship in connection with his research on the history of the Superconducting Super Collider. In 2002, the American Institute of Physics awarded Riordan its prestigious Andrew W. Gemant Award for his efforts in communicating physics and its relationship to the wider culture.