Peter Atkins is professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford and fellow of Lincoln College, where he is tutor in physical chemistry. After graduating from the University of Leicester, he received a Harkness Fellowship from the Commonwealth Fund, which he spent at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then took up his current position at Oxford in 1965. He was awarded the Meldola Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1969 and was Nyholm Lecturer in 1999. He sits on the Physical Chemistry Division of the IUPAC and is chairman of IUPAC's Committee for Chemical Education.
Julio de Paula is professor of chemistry at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, where he teaches general chemistry, physical chemistry, and biophysical chemistry, and conducts research in photochemistry and photobiology. After obtaining a doctorate in chemistry from Yale University, he was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University, and then took up his current position at Haverford in 1989. He was awarded a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1998.