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Bulent Atalay, author of Math and the Mona Lisa: the Art and Science of Leonaardo da Vinci (Smithsonian Books, 2004), and Leonardo's Universe: the Renaissance World of Leonardo da Vinci (National Geographic Books, 2009), is a scientist and artist with roots in Turkey, England, and the United States. His grandfather was a young Turkish military officer who survived eight months of the Gallipoli Campaign of WWI, and was subsequently killed while fighting Lawrence of Arabia in 1916. His father was also a military officer, as well as a diplomat who held successive assignments as military attache during the post-war (WWII) period to London, Paris, and Washington. Read "A Tribute to General Kemal Atalay"

Atalay received an early classical education in England and the United States, attending Eton (UK) and St. Andrew's School (Delaware), site of the 1989 Robin Williams film, Dead Poet's Society. He went into physics by accident when a secretary in the college admissions office misread his career aspirations as "physicist" instead of "physician," but he found he had latent interests in physics. He received his professional training - BS, MS, MA, Ph.D. and post-doctoral work in theoretical physics - at Georgetown, UC-Berkeley, Princeton and Oxford. Now, he is a professor of physics at the University of Mary Washington, an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. An accomplished artist, Atalay has presented his works in one-man exhibitions in London and Washington, and his two books of lithographs - Lands of Washington and Oxford and the English Countryside - can be found in the permanent collections of Buckingham Palace, the Smithsonian, and the White House. Four years after the release of Math and the Mona Lisa by Smithsonian Books in April 2004, the book has appeared in eleven languages, with the twelfth, Polish, still pending. Leonardo's Universe, coauthored with former student Keith Wamsley, was released by National Geographic Books on January 6, 2009, although the Britannica Blog published on Dec. 30, 2008, jumped the gun, listing it as one of "Ten Must-Have Books for 2008."