Denise Schmandt-Besserat was Professor of Art and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin until she retired in 2004. A graduate of the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, she is a renowned Near Eastern Archaeologist. She has worked on Near Eastern archaeological collections in all the major museums of the Middle East, Europe and the USA. She is the author of When Writing Met Art (2007), Before Writing (1992) and How Writing Came About (1996) which was selected by American Scientist, as "one of the 100 books that shaped science in the 20th century." Her work on the origin of writing and mathematics has been covered, among others, by Scientific American, Time, Life, The New York Times and the Washington post. She has appeared in television programs such as Out of the Past (Discovery Channel); The Nature of Things (CBC), Search for Solutions(PBS) and Tell the Truth (NBC).