D. Graham Burnett is a professor of history and the history of science at Princeton University, where he is affiliated with the IHUM interdisciplinary doctoral program. His scholarly books on cartography, empire, optics, and the oceans have examined the changing understanding of nature from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Burnett is associated with the research collective ESTAR(SER) and the activist coalition "The Friends of Attention," with whom he coauthored Twelve Theses on Attention (2022).

Justin E. H. Smith is professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité and a member of the SPHERE Laboratory for Research in the History of Science. He is the author of five books, most recently The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning (2022), and a frequent contributor to a number of popular publications. In 2015 a main-belt asteroid, 4.5 kilometers in diameter, was named after him: 13585 Justinsmith (1993 TC20).