Istvan Hargittai is Professor of Chemistry and Head of the George A Olah PhD School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is a member of the Hungarian and Norwegian Academies of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. He holds a PhD degree from Eotvos University, D.Sc. degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and honorary doctorates from Moscow University, the University of North Carolina, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. His latest books include The Road to Stockholm, Our Lives, and The Martians of Science. Magdolna Hargittai is Research Professor of Structural Chemistry of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. She holds a PhD degree from Eotvos University, DSc degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina. The Hargittais' research is in structural chemistry. Their other joint books include Symmetry through the Eyes of a Chemist and In Our Own Image. Their two children are both PhDs. Balazs is Associate Professor of Chemistry at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and Eszter is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

"Relaxed, doubtless, by the deadpan Hargittai sense of humour, these scientists are remarkably revealing about the freedoms and constraints of later 20th century science. Candid science VI weighs 1.7kg, but is difficult to put down."Chemistry World