Paul Hewitt was a Silver Medalist Flyweight Boxing Champion for New England States at the age of 17. He was then a cartoonist, sign painter, and uranium prospector before beginning his physics studies.
Conceptual Physics was first published in 1971 while Hewitt was teaching at City College of San Francisco. He has also served as a guest lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and most recently at the Universlty of Hawaii at Hilo. Currently, Hewitt enjoys teaching at the City College of San Francisco and at San Francisco's science museum, The Exploratorium.
John Suchocki received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1987 from Virginia Commonwealth University, where his research focused on the isolation and characterization of natural products. After a two year post-doc in medicinal chemistry/pharmacology at the Medical College of Virginia, John became a visiting assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Hawaii at Manoa where he began working with his uncle, Paul Hewitt, on the liberal arts college textbook, Conceptual Physical Science, now in its Second Edition. After a couple of years at the Manoa campus, John transferred to and eventually received tenure from Leeward Community College, one of the University of Hawaii's community colleges. There his research efforts turned to chemical education, with particular emphasis on liberal arts chemistry courses and distance learning technology.
Concurrent to his writing and teaching careers, John is also a producer of multimedia content, much of which is now available on his Conceptual Chemistry Alive! CD-ROM series. John currently lives on Oahu with his wife Tracy and three children, Ian, Reece, and Maitreya.