“When we gaze into the night sky, all of us wonder what it’s all about,” says MICHIO KAKU, a theoretical physicist at City University of New York and cofounder of string field theory. The answer may be closer than many realize, he argues in “Testing String Theory,” page 30. “A new generation of atom smashers and satellites is going online,” he says, “and that may give us the first tangible indirect evidence of string theory.” Kaku’s recent book Parallel Worlds (Doubleday, 2004) was nominated for Britain’s prestigious 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.

As a photographer and researcher in the School of Science at MIT, FELICE FRANKEL makes images that show how nature plays with light and color. “Just like a writer uses words, I use pictures,” she says. “It’s not art. It’s very much about scientific information.” Some of her pictures in “Illuminated Life,” page 42, are from No Small Matter (Harvard University Press, 2006), her second book in collaboration with George M. Whitesides. Her photographs have also appeared on the covers of Nature and Science.

Harvard University chemistry professor GEORGE M. WHITESIDES has been collaborating with Felice Frankel (above) since 1992. “By looking at a problem or a phenomenon with words, equations, and images, it is more likely you will understand it than if you use just one window onto the subject,” he says. Whitesides takes a similar approach to his own work by combining biology, chemistry, and physics. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1998.

When VIRGINIA MORELL visited Sichuan Province in China to report “The Mother of Gardens,” page 62, she was delighted to encounter wild varieties of plants—such as the regal lily—that grace her own garden in Ashland, Oregon. “If I was home more often, I would probably be more than an avid amateur gardener,” Morell says. “I love plants. I think I have the gardener’s gene.” Her work has been featured in National Geographic, and she has written several books, including Blue Nile (National Geographic, 2002).