Jürgen Neffe was born in Herne in 1956. After graduating from high school he first studied physics, but later switched to biology. In 1985 he received his Dr. rer. nat. degree from the RWTH Aachen University on a biochemical topic. In the 1980s he worked as an author and editor for the journal Geo and as a freelance correspondent for the scientific journal Nature. From 1993 he worked as a reporter, columnist, and correspondent at Spiegel. In early 2003 he transferred to the Max Planck Society, where he set up and managed the capital city office at Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin. In 2005 Neffe completed a biography of Albert Einstein, which became a bestseller, as did his later biographies of Charles Darwin (2008) and Karl Marx (2017). Neffe has received several awards for his work as a journalist and author, including the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize. His Einstein biography was declared "Book of the Year" by the Washington Post.

Book publications:

• Einstein - A Biography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2007, translated by Shelley Frisch.
• Darwin. Das Abenteuer des Lebens. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2008.
• Mehr als wir sind. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2014.
• Marx. Der Unvollendete. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2017.