Russell Martin

Russell Martin is a lifelong resident of Colorado. He graduated in 1974 from The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he returns once each year to teach a course in creative nonfiction. He spent a postgraduate year on a Thomas Watson Foundation fellowship in Britain and Guatemala, then worked as a newspaper reporter in Telluride, Colorado for a number of years before becoming a freelance writer.

He is the author of Cowboy: The Enduring Myth of the Wild West; Entering Space, Matters Gray and White: A Neurologist, His Patients & the Mysteries of the Brain; The Color Orange: A Super Bowl Season with the Denver Broncos; A Story That Stands Like A Dam: Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West, winner of the Caroline Bancroft History Prize; and the novel Beautiful Islands.

In the fall of 1995, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater.

Books
	Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved Ludwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer. In those days, it was customary to snip a lock of hair as a keepsake, and this Hiller did a day after Beethoven's death.