Dr. Mark Eberhart is the author of Why Things Break and Feeding the Fire. At age 16 Mark enrolled in at the University of Colorado where he received both a BS with majors in chemistry and applied mathematics and a MS in physical biochemistry. In 1979 he applied and was accepted to MIT as a Ph.D. candidate studying Materials Science and Engineering.
At the same time that Mark was preparing for his move to Boston, the Iranian revolution was in full swing and gasoline in the US was in short supply. Undeterred by the uncertainty, Mark placed six five-gallon cans full of gas next to his other possessions in the rented U-Hall and headed east. This trip seeded an interest in energy science and policy that never faded. Four years later Mark received his PhD and was one of a handful of scientist attempting to understand fracture at the quantum mechanical level.
The pursuit took him from MIT to Los Alamos National Laboratory and from there to the premier university for engineering in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado School of Mines, where he is now a professor teaching chemistry and materials science. He is a consultant to NOVA and a popular speaker giving presentations as diverse as the role of science in society, to Boston's Great Molasses Disaster and other failures that have shaped engineering, science, and technology.