A professional magician, Arthur Benjamin can multiply large numbers faster than a calculator, figure out the weekday of any date in history, and has memorized the decimal numbers of Pi out to 100 digits.

Paul Hoffman is the author of a memoir called King’s Gambit and two biographies, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and Wings of Madness. Formerly the publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica and the long-time editor in chief of Discover magazine, Paul has performed mathematical paper-folding tricks on David Letterman and strapped Oprah into a virtual hang-glider while she accused him of ogling her butt.

Gerd Gigerenzer is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He has trained U.S. Federal Judges, physicians, and top managers in decision-making and understanding risks and uncertainties.

Roald Hoffmann is a professor of chemistry and the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is a graduate of both Columbia and Harvard Universities.

Vinton Cerf, a vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, is widely known as one of the founding fathers of the Internet. In the 1970s, Cerf co-designed the network’s architecture and the protocols it uses to communicate, and he has been instrumental in shaping its direction in the decades since.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

David Brenner is the Director of the Columbia University Center for Radiological Research, which is the oldest and largest radiological research laboratory, worldwide. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Center for High-Throughput Minimally-Invasive Radiation Biodosimetry.

Barry Barish is an experimental physicist and a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at Caltech. He became the Principal Investigator of LIGO in 1994 and was LIGO Director from 1997-2005. Barish led the effort through the approval of funding by the NSF National Science Board in 1994, and the construction and commissioning of the LIGO interferometers in Livingston, LA and Hanford, WA in 1997.

Rob Knight is Professor of Pediatrics and Computer Science & Engineering and is Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at the University of California San Diego. He authored Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes.

Bruce Goldstone has written more than a dozen books for children, many of which encourage readers to see the playful side of math and numbers, such as Great Estimations, I See a Pattern Here, 100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days, and That’s a Possibility! His latest book, Super Summer, completes his exploration of the sights, smells, and science of the seasons.