JOEL N. SHURKIN is Science Writer Emeritus at Stanford University, USA, where he has written and taught for many years. He covered the moon landings for
Reuters, served ten years as Science Writer at the
Philadelphia Inquirer and was on the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for covering Three Mile Island, among many other awards. He has written nine books including
Terman's Kids (Little, Brown) about the study of gifted students,
Invisible Fire, on the eradication of smallpox, a science-fiction novel called
The Helix (Norton) and most recently
A Consumer's Guide to Psychotherapy (OUP). His definitive history of the computer,
Engines of the Mind (Norton), is in multiple editions in several languages.