John Gribbin graduated with a degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. He later completed an MSc in astronomy, also from Sussex (1967) and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (1971). As a science writer, he has worked for the science journal Nature, and the magazine New Scientist and has written for The Times, The Guardian and the Independent as well as their Sunday counterparts and BBC radio. He is best known for his book In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (1984). In 1974 he published, with Stephen Plagemann, a book titled The Jupiter Effect, which predicted that an alignment of the planets on one side of the Sun in March 1982 would cause gravitational effects that would trigger earthquakes in the San Andreas fault, wiping out Los Angeles.[1] Gribbin repudiated it in the July 17, 1980 issue of New Scientist where he stated that he had been "too clever by half".[2] In a February 1988 article in Nature, Gribbin was the first person to suggest that the greenhouse effect might be reduced by adding iron to the oceans as a "fertiliser".[3] He published his 100th book, The Fellowship, in 2005.