John Taylor received his B.A. in math from Cambridge University in 1960 and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Berkeley in 1963. He is professor emeritus of physics and Presidential Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of some 40 articles in research journals; a book, Classical Mechanics; and three other textbooks, one of which, An Introduction to Error Analysis, has been translated into eleven foreign languages. He received a Distinguished Service Citation from the American Association of Physics Teachers and was named Colorado Professor of the Year in 1989. His television series Physics for Fun won an Emmy Award in 1990. He retired in 2005 and now lives in Washington, D.C.