Chad Orzel is the Gordon Gould Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and the author of five books explaining science for non-scientists: How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog (Scribner, 2009) and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog (Basic, 2012), which explain modern physics through imaginary conversations with Emmy, his German shepherd; Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist (Basic, 2014), on the role of scientific thinking in everyday life; Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning (BenBella/ Oneworld 2018), and his latest, A Brief History of Timekeeping (BenBella/Oneworld 2022), which covers the last several thousand years of the science and technology of tracking the passage of time.

He has a BA in Physics from Williams College and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he did his thesis research on collisions of laser-cooled atoms at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the lab of Bill Phillips, who shared the  1997 Nobel Prize in physics (not for anything Chad did, but it was a fun time to be in that group). He has been blogging about science since 2002, on his own site, at scienceblogs.com, at Forbes, and on Substack. In 2021, he was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his work on public communication of science. He lives in Niskayuna, NY with his wife Kate Nepveu, their two children, and their new dog Charlie the pupper.