Ramón Piñón, Jr. was born in El Paso, Texas in 1939. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1966. He now holds the title of Emeritus Professor, Division of Biology, University of California, San Diego (UCSD). His research specialty was microbial genetics. He has taught a wide variety of classes spanning a broad area of modern biology. He developed the first Human Reproduction course in the UCSD Biology department in 1973 and taught it for many years. Out of that experience came his textbook Biology of Human Reproduction published by University Science Books in 2002. Discussions over the years with students in his classes often focused on questions and issues in their lives and their parents’ lives that arose from the topics in the course. These conversations suggested that there would be a wider audience for the topics covered in the Human Reproduction course, and he set out to convert his textbook into a book that would be more accessible to a non-expert, a lay reader. He soon realized that he really had material for two books – Friction and Fantasy: Opening Pandora’s Jar, and a companion volume, Our Human Odyssey: Becoming Female and Male:, which focuses on the biological aspects of our reproductive system.