Joachim Pietzsch is a science writer with a broad interest in history. After medical training he earned a degree in journalism, and worked for 15 years in the global communications and global R&D departments of the pharmaceutical company Hoechst AG, and its successor company Aventis, where he was the senior manager for scientific relations. He has written for several newspapers, magazines and journals, among them Cicero, the German magazine for political culture, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery and Süddeutsche Zeitung.