Timothy Ferris is the author of a dozen books – among them The Science of Liberty and the bestsellers The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way. He edited the anthologies Best American Science Writing 2001 and the World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics. A former editor of Rolling Stone magazine, he has published over 200 articles and essays.

Ferris wrote and narrated three PBS documentary films—"The Creation of the Universe," (1986), “Life Beyond Earth” (1999), and “Seeing in the Dark” (2007).

Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft. Now exiting the solar system, the Voyagers are the most distant probes ever created by humans.

Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His works have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines–astronomy, English, history, journalism, and philosophy–at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.