Professor Timothy Ferris contributes his breadth of knowledge and creativity to the UC Davis Physics Advisory Board. He has been referred to as "the best popular science writer in the English language" by The Christian Science Monitor and "the best science writer of his generation" by The Washington Post. He is the author of twelve books, including The Science of Liberty and bestsellers The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way, which were named by The New York Times as among the leading books published in the 20th century.

Professor Ferris produced the Voyager Golden Record, an artifact of human civilization containing music, sounds of Earth, and encoded photographs launched aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1977. He has served as a consultant to NASA on long-term space exploration policy, and was among the journalists selected as candidates to fly aboard the Space Shuttle in 1986.

Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines—astronomy, English, history, journalism, and philosophy—at four universities. He is currently a professor emeritus with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Ferris received a bachelor's degree in English and communications from Northwestern University.