Gregory Benford is a professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Phi Beta Kappa, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to science. His research in both astrophysics and plasma physics has been supported by NASA, AFOSR and other agencies. His 1999 analysis of what endures, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia, takes up the issue of long term planning and communication. A fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, his fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. In 2007 he was awarded the Asimov Memorial Award for Popularizing Science.