Mary Roach was born on Mar 20, 1959. Roach writes books about scientific topics that might be offputting but handles her material with a sense of humor that helps readers get past the "ick" factor.

Roach began writing in the mid-1980s, as a freelance columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her skill at explaining complicated topics in a way that ordinary readers could understand made her popular and her writing began appearing in a wide range of magazines, including Vogue, National Geographic, GQ, and Discover. By the mid-1990s, Roach was winning national journalism awards for articles on such seemingly dry topics as the use of bamboo to build earthquake-proof homes.

Her first book contract came about because of her membership in a San Francisco writers' group. Each January, the members would make supportive predictions/challenges about where their careers would be in a year; one year, a member of the group predicted that by the next January, Roach would have a book contract. As Roach tells the story, "when October came around I thought, I have three months to pull together a book proposal and have a book contract. This is what literally lit the fire under my butt."

The book that came out of that contract was Stiff (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), a look at how science makes use of human cadavers. That topic set the tone for Roach's books. She says that a topic for one of her books has "got to have a little science, it's got to have a little history, a little humor—and something gross."

Roach is not a scientist, and has no training or academic background in science, but was drawn to the field when she realized that her most interesting magazine assignments were about some aspect of science. She presents the results of her research into various corners of science by starting from the same "I don't know the answer" position that the reader is likely to be in, and writes about the researchers and scientists who do have the answers, and how their research answers the questions she's been wondering about.

Those questions are often the ones that everyone wants an answer to, but might be too embarrassed to ask.  A classic example: How do astronauts go to the bathroom?, which Roach addresses in her book on the science of space travel, Packing for Mars (e-book | print | audio).

Roach's other potentially squeamish topics include the science of sex, in Bonk (e-book | print | audio); the science of warfare, in Grunt (e-book | print | audio); and the science of eating, digestion, and elimination, in Gulp (e-book | e-audio | print | audio). The biggest departure from Roach's scientific subject matter has been Spook (e-book | print | audio), in which she explores attempts to communicate with the dead, or to prove that there is a soul.

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