The Authors : Barry Popik was born in New York City in 1961. He is an attorney by vocation and a word researcher by avocation, whose contributions to such items as dude, hot dog, The Big Apple, and the Show-me expression have been very favorably received by the scholarly community. Gerald Cohen was born in New York City in 1941. He majored in Russian Civilization at Dartmouth College (1958-1962), received a Diploma in Slavonic Studies from Oxford University (1963) and then studied Slavic linguistics at Columbia University (Ph.D.
1971). He is presently Professor of Foreign Languages at the University of Missouri-Rolla, where his research interests have shifted primarily to etymology.