J. Woods Halley is a Professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. His research group studies electrochemical phenomena, including the origin of life, as well as low temperature phases of many-body systems, including superfluidity and superconductivity, using analytical theory and computer simulation. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has previously published books on the likelihood of extraterrestrial life and statistical mechanics.