Robert A. Meyers obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and has more than 17 patents, 50 technical papers and 12 books to his name. As Editor-in-Chief he conceived and edited several ambitious multivolume reference works, e.g. the Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry (Wiley), the preceding Encyclopedia of Molecular Biology and Molecular Medicine (Wiley-VCH) and the Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology (Academic Press).