Robert Matthews is a visiting lecturer in science at Aston University, in Birmingham, England. He has published pioneering research in fields ranging from code-breaking to predicting coincidences, and won the internationally renowned Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for his studies of Murphy’s Law, including the reason why toast so often lands butter-side down. An award-winning science writer, he has contributed to many newspapers and magazines world-wide, and is currently science consultant for Focus magazine, a flagship BBC publication.