About the Authors

Thomas C. Hayes
Thomas C. Hayes reached electronics via a circuitous route that started in law school, wound through discontented years as a Wall Street lawyer, and eventually found him contentedly teaching Laboratory Electronics at Harvard, for about forty years. He has also taught electronics for the Harvard Summer School, the Harvard Extension School, and for seventeen years in Boston University’s Department of Physics. He shares authorship of one patent, for a device that logs exposure to therapeutic bright light. He has designed circuits as the need for them arises in the electronics course. One such design is a display, serial interface, and programmer for use with the 8051 microcomputer of the first edition. More recently, the arrival of grandchildren allowed him to make a lighting system for a doll house, including wall outlets and lighted views out back windows, dimmable to simulate twilight and night, and then a gradual moonrise in blue.

David Abrams
After graduating from M.I.T. with degrees in Electrical Engineering, David designed analog and digital electronic instrumentation used in medicine, education, and chemical analysis. In 1986 he co-founded Galactic Industries Corp., a software company that brought analytical data processing to personal computing through efficient programming. In 2001, David negotiated the sale of Galactic to a division of Thermo Electron and, a short time later, left Thermo Galactic to enter Harvard Law School. After law school, he initially worked as an Intellectual Property Associate at WilmerHale, then clerked in Federal District Court for The Honorable Judge Rya Zobel. He returned to Harvard Law School to help establish the first-year Problem Solving Workshop while a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society investigating the clash between copyright and the Internet. He taught Problem Solving at Suffolk Law School and introductory circuit design (ES52 and PHYS123) at Harvard University before retiring in 2024.

With the assistance of

Paul Horowitz
Paul Horowitz is a Professor of Physics and of Electrical Engineering, emeritus, at Harvard University, where in 1974 he originated the Laboratory Electronics course from which emerged the The Art of Electronics.  In addition to his work in circuit design and electronic instrumentation, his research interests have included observational astrophysics, x-ray and particle microscopy, and optical interferometry. He is one of the pioneers of the search for intelligent life beyond Earth (SETI). He is the author of some 200 scientific articles and reports, has consulted widely for industry and government, and is the designer of numerous scientific and photographic instruments.