David M. States (b. 1954) lives in California, where he works as a technical writer for the biotechnology industry. He was originally trained as a cultural anthropologist and historian, doing research in fishing villages in California and Portugal. In the 1980s, he began working in the field of science education. During the 1990s he lived in Germany and wrote scientific histories of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research.