Luca Turin was born in 1953 and educated in France and the UK. He holds a PhD in Biophysics from the University of London, and his research touches on olfaction and anesthesia. His book The Secret of Scent describes some of his work on olfaction, on which he also lectured at TED. In 1992 he published, in French, the first book of critical perfume reviews. Later, in collaboration with Tania Sanchez, he wrote the more comprehensive Perfumes: the A-Z Guide and The Little Book of Perfumes. He has won the Prix Jasmin (France) twice and the Jasmine Prize (UK) once, for excellence in writing on perfume. He was a columnist for Swiss magazine NZZ Folio for eleven years and contributes perfume reviews to Style Arabia and WWD.

From 2003 to 2014, scientist and perfume critic Luca Turin (The Secret of Scent, Perfumes: the A-Z Guide) wrote two widely admired columns for distinguished Swiss magazine NZZ Folio. First in the "Duftnote" he discussed all things smellable, from Blue Stratos to Mitsouko and the fragrance of a particular Air France jet. Afterward in "Either/Or" he helped readers examine the relative merits of such as heels vs. flats, trains vs. trams, or Captain Nemo vs. Captain Haddock. Written in Turin's inimitable and highly quotable style, full of passionately held opinions on subjects major and minor, pulling on culture high and low, Old World and New, aesthetic and scientific, these essays were some of the best loved parts of the magazine. However, the columns were only intermittently available in English. This is the first time many of these writings have been published in the original. Included are four feature articles also published in NZZ Folio, plus a foreword written by his co-author of Perfumes: the A-Z Guide, Tania Sanchez.