Dan Kevles writes about science, medicine, and society, including law, past and present. His works include The Baltimore Case, In the Name of Eugenics, The Physicists, and articles, essays, and reviews in scholarly and popular journals, among them The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker. He is also coeditor, with Leroy Hood, of The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project and a coauthor of Inventing America: A History of the United States. He is currently completing a book on the history of innovation and intellectual property protection in living organisms since the 18th century.

Kevles received his B.A. in physics and Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. From 1964 to 2001, he taught at the California Institute of Technology. In 2001 he joined the faculty of Yale University where he is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History and a Senior Research Scholar in Law at the Law School. He has received various honors and prizes, including the History of Science Society's George Sarton Medal for career achievement.