Ben Root is a scientific programmer at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., with BS and MS degrees in meteorology. When he isn't working, Ben is still programming (or thinking about programming). He's a core developer for the Matplotlib package and an active contributor to several other SciPy packages. He is the author of Interactive Applications Using Matplotlib and has presented his "Anatomy of Matplotlib" tutorial at the annual SciPy conference for three years running. Even when Ben is relaxing and chatting with friends, he is still talking about programming, so his friends gave him a microphone and had him talk about Python and open source programming for scientists to everyone on the Internet.