Many diverse talents make our vision for Touch Press a reality. Our founding team brings together several renowned individuals—who collectively represent decades of experience in publishing, software development, media production and interaction design.
Our strategic partners bring invaluable expertise from a wide range of fields. And as Touch Press continues to develop, we look forward to future collaborations with an ever-growing circle of authors and new partners.
Books are one of the defining inventions of the civilisation—and today they are poised for a revolution. Our aim is to create a new kind of book that makes use of emerging technology to redefine the book, reinvent publishing, and forever transform the act of reading.
Award-winning ex-BBC producer, and executive of multiple groundbreaking ventures; after studying philosophy at Oxford University, Max joined the BBC where he produced numerous Horizon and NOVA documentaries. He was involved in the BBC’s pioneering Interactive Television Unit and headed an early collaboration between the BBC and Apple. Subsequently he co-led a management buyout of this BBC group, forming a media publishing company that achieved a successful IPO in 1995.
In 2004 Max made the radical decision to train formally as a scientist, and completed a PhD in chemistry at Imperial College in London. For the past decade he has collaborated closely with Theodore Gray designing and building elaborate periodic table displays and installations around the world.
Their first iPad title The Elements resulted from this partnership and has become an award-winning digital publishing phenomenon. The success of The Elements led to the formation of Touch Press in April 2010. Max co-produced the landmark literary iPad title The Waste Land.
Max is widely travelled, having filmed for TV companies comprising the BBC and PBS in over 30 countries, including six memorable weeks in North Korea. He has received four BAFTA nominations and two BAFTA awards. He is passionately interested in natural history and has personally filmed every British bird, butterfly and bumblebee species.
BAFTA (Factual) - for DNA Interactive
BAFTA (Electronic Magazine) - for BirdGuides
An innovative software developer, author, and populariser of science; having started out in chemistry, Theodore joined Stephen Wolfram in the creation of Mathematica in 1987. He has guided interface strategy at Wolfram, and has been responsible for a sequence of major innovations. He pioneered the concept of Mathematica notebooks, which serve as the main interface to Mathematica, and have since made possible the creation of millions of interactive computable documents.
Theodore is passionate about communicating the excitement, and the importance, of science to a wide audience. He is a Contributing Editor at Popular Science magazine, and has authored its Gray Matter column since 2003. The How 2.0 section containing Theodore’s column won a National Magazine Award in 2005, and the column itself is a finalist for its own National Magazine Award for 2010.
Theodore is the author of Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home–But Probably Shouldn’t, and the best-selling coffee table book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which was the first groundbreaking interactive book published by Touch Press.
He is the proprietor of periodictable.com, for which he has received an Ig Nobel Prize, and is the creator of the iconic photographic periodic-table poster seen in universities, schools, museums, and on TV shows from MythBusters to Hannah Montana.
Grady Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry - for The Elements
Ig Nobel Prize - for the Periodic Table Table
MacUser Editor’s Choice Award - for Mathematica
A software and digital business professional with over 20 years of experience at the leading edge of software development; John graduated from Trinity College Dublin with first class honours in software and electronics engineering, which was followed by a research masters. He has delivered scores of successful projects on a wide range of desktop, web, and mobile platforms.
Software architecture and cross-platform development are areas of special interest. John has worked on projects as part of the Apple QuickTime team and has authored a book in the QuickTime Developer series. He is a highly experienced iOS developer, having worked on every Touch Press title to date, as well as developing iPhone applications for his natural history business BirdGuides.
John is a keen naturalist and is active in conservation and research in Ireland where he currently serves as chairman of BirdWatch Ireland, Ireland’s leading conservation charity.
Scientist, author, inventor and entrepreneur; Stephen is best known for creating Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha®, and for authoring A New Kind of Science. In his early years he made a number of discoveries in physics and cosmology. In the 1980s his now-classic work on cellular automata helped launch the field of complexity theory. Then in 1986 Stephen began the creation of Mathematica, founded Wolfram Research, and launched the first version of Mathematica.
Stephen has served as CEO of Wolfram Research for more than two decades, and has provided the technical leadership that has made Mathematica the world's leading system for advanced computing. His company recently created Wolfram|Alpha®, the breakthrough computational knowledge engine released in 2009. He has received multiple awards for science, technology and business, including a 1981 MacArthur Fellowship.
In addition to his work in technology and business, Stephen is also a world-renowned scientist. Using Mathematica as his tool, Stephen's groundbreaking studies of the computational universe led to his bestselling 2002 book A New Kind of Science, and to the launch of a vibrant new area of science.
He has a longstanding commitment to publishing and communication, having been the author—and publisher—of two bestselling books, and publisher of a leading academic journal for 25 years. His broad interests span many areas of science, technology and their history. The tools and methods, created by Stephen, have had a defining influence on science and technology of the past three decades, and provide the foundations for even more dramatic developments to come.
MacArthur Fellowship
