After earning a degree in physics and working for several years on robotics for NASA, author Randall Munroe started an online comic strip titled xkcd (a nonsense word) that uses stick figures who make wry comments about technology, science, and society. The webcomic became a huge success, garnering tens of millions of views per month; it won a Hugo Award for best graphic story. Xkcd stick figures are featured in the book What If?

Though he insists that “I am a guy who draws pictures on the Internet” (89), Munroe also posts regular answers to absurd questions about science on his blog, What If? A selection of those answers became the book of the same name, along with a second edition, What If? 2. Munroe has published other books, including Thing Explainer, which describes scientific principles using the 1,000 most common words in English. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he designed a chart that straightforwardly explains radiation; the chart has been adopted worldwide by news media. An asteroid, 4942 Munroe, is named in his honor.