Francis D. Hauser, PhD, earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Denver in 1972. He is a dynamic systems analyst in the motions and control of launch and reentry vehicles; multibody spacecraft; fixed- and rotor-wing aircraft; large, high-speed oceangoing watercraft; land craft; and wind-driven turbines. He is also a university and college lecturer in graduate, undergraduate, and continuing education courses on conventional, modern, and space vehicle control, general optimization theory, Newtonian mechanics (statics and dynamics), linear algebra, and Fourier analysis.

When he realized that he could do a complete autopilot stability analysis of a large flexible launch vehicle right on his laptop using Microsoft Office with Excel/VBA, he decided he must share his discovery, and thus his book Excel with VBA, written for engineers and mathematicians, was born.