Jeffrey Putnam has spent (and misspent) his life quite happily in the pursuit of knowledge of all sorts. After getting an undergraduate degree in mathematics, he spent several years in the Peace Corps in Zaire learning to speak French with an atrocious accent, as well as getting on-the-job lessons in how to inflict math and physics on high school students. After returning to the US, he went to graduate school at the University at Albany, garnering two master's degrees along the way.

A real job eventually became inevitable, and he worked for the Computer Science Branch at General Electrics Research and Development Center and as the main programmer for a startup, before returning to student life at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for his PhD in electrical, systems and computer engineering. Since then, he has annoyed students and faculty alike at New Mexico Tech, designed systems and irritated marketers at yet another startup, and tried to serve as the faculty for a computer science program at Eastern Oregon University. He has now landed in Washington State, where he works for the computer science department at Eastern Washington University.

His professional interests range from evolutionary programming and artificial life to computer systems to programming languages (ask tomorrow and the list is likely to change). Nonprofessionally he has been known to enjoy randomly exploring things, including wandering extensively in the woods (sometimes as a wilderness search and rescue volunteer); climbing up and down hills, mountains, and rocks; and reading (though only rarely all at once).