Following a PhDin chemical physics from the University of Cambridge, Jeffrey Huw Williams worked as a researchscientist in the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Illinois, andsubsequently as a physicist at the Institut Laue–Langevin, France. Leavingresearch, Williams moved to the world of science publishing and the communicationof science by becoming the European editor for the physical sciences for theAAAS's Science and subsequently, theassistant executive secretary of the International Union of Pure and AppliedChemistry. From 2003 to 2008, he was the head of publications at theBureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), Sèvres. It was during theseyears at the BIPM that he became interested in, and familiar with, the origin ofthe Metric System, its subsequent evolution into the SI, and the transformation into the Quantum SI. At the BIPM, he was the editor of theirjournal Metrologia. He has writtenwidely about science, technology, the impact of science on society and theindividual for general-interest magazines such as New Scientist and for more specialized magazines (Chemistry in Britain, Physics Today,Chemical & Engineering News, Physics World and Chemistry and Industry).