Martin Hutchinson

• Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

• Was involved in large-scale projects and site layouts, including Ford's Dagenham plant.

• Inventor of the ViaSpan system, a modular, small-footprint, flyover system that could be assembled and disassembled quickly on-site from prefabricated sections, and could handle a range of inclines and curves.  As well as producing permanent and semi-permanent structures, ViaSpan could also produce emergency roadways and temporary overpasses to avoid closing motorway lanes during essential roadwork maintenance.

Hutchinson was a keen artist, musician and model-maker, and some of his creations were accepted by the National Maritime Museum.  As artist and architect he was naturally interested in the Golden Section, and his research on ancient structures and the Fibonacci Series produced an initial manuscript in 1970. The work was essentially complete when he died in 1973, and is now finally being set and published for the first time, for release in Summer 2008.

Eric Baird

• Developer of a commercial range of audio- and audio-hardware-related computer software in the 1980's.

• Released a multi-pane hypertext version of Abert Einstein's book, "Relativity, The Special and the General Theories" in Windows' "HelpFile" format in the 1990's.

• Wrote and maintained what was probably the largest relativity-themed website on the internet during the 1990's, "Erk's Relativity Pages".

Baird's research in relativity theory has tended to focus on one question: Is the current theoretical structure really optimal, or does it represent an artificial, "special-case" solution that has been forced upon us by a pragmatic choice of initial decisions? How far is the shape of current research dictated by a set of initial assumptions taken a century ago, that can't be justified with hindsight? Could relativity theory be simpler, easier to understand, and more functional than the system that we currently have?

Baird's book  attempts to explain both the good and bad aspects of current relativity theory for a general scientifically-literate audience, in a popular, heavily-illustrated format. It's primarily aimed at the sort of people who bought Hawking's "Brief History of Time", but covers a wider range of subjects, and strays into some topics associated with current cutting-edge research.