Oren Harman was born in 1973. He grew up near the Jerusalem forest, and for some years in New York City, where a local newspaper dubbed him "the little Israeli magician" for his exploits in soccer. After receiving a doctorate from Oxford University, Oren became a professor of the history and philosophy of science, and an award-winning writer.
 
Oren loves evolution, history, philosophy, biology, mythology and the connections between them. His books include The Man Who Invented the Chromosome, The Price of Altruism, and Evolutions: Fifteen Myths that Explain our World. He is also the co-creator and editor of a trilogy of books on Rebels, Outsiders, and Dreamers in Biology, and the co-editor of the Handbook of the Historiography of Biology. His children's book Darwin's Missing Notebooks was published by Lama Books in 2024. Oren's latest book is Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History from Basic Books, which has been called "masterful", "a soulful, genre-defying inquiry into the nature of transformation", and "a new classic of natural history". Oren's books have been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Turkish, Croatian, Japanese, Polish, Italian, Korean, Hebrew, and Malayalam.