Steven A Balbus was born in 1953 in Philadelphia, USA and is currently Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford, UK. He received BS degrees in both Mathematics and Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975, obtained his PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981, and held postdoctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University, USA. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1985, moved to the École Normale Supérieure de Paris in 2004 and joined the University of Oxford in September 2012.
John F Hawley was born in 1959 in Annapolis, Maryland, USA and is currently Associate Dean for the Sciences, and VITA Professor and Chair of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, USA. He obtained his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1984 and was Bantrell Fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 1984 to 1987. He has been associated with the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia as early as 1987, first as Assistant Professor (1987–1993), then as Associate Professor (1993–1999) and from 1999, as Professor of Astronomy.