Charles L. Adler is a Professor of Physics at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He received his PhD, MS, and BS in Physics from Brown University, where he focused on experimental laser physics. He is the author of more than 40 papers on experimental physics, optics, and mathematics. He is a member of the Light and Color in Nature group, an international group of scientists who study the interaction of light with the atmosphere and landscape. He was the chair of the 2012 Light and Color in Nature meeting and has been the coeditor of four special issues of the scientific journal Applied Optics on the topic of meteorological optics.

Professor Adler has been a science fiction fan almost since he learned to read, and his first ambition was to become a science fiction writer. The genre led him to a love of science, especially when he realized that the science portrayed in science fiction was often inaccurate. To help readers tell the real science from the fake, he wrote the critically acclaimed book Wizards, Aliens, and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 2015, it was a cowinner of the Science Writing Award for Books from the American Institute of Physics, and it made several lists of notable science books, including that of The Guardian. He is also cowriting a book on the science of Leonardo da Vinci with Matthew Landrus.