Ottaviani has a background in science, earning a B.S. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986, followed by a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan in 1987. He worked for several years retrofitting and fixing nuclear power plants. Intrigued by the research component of his job, Ottaviani began taking library science courses at Drexel University, and in 1990 he enrolled in the Library and Information Science program at the University of Michigan. He earned his M.S. in information and library studies from Michigan in 1992. He spent several years working as a reference librarian at Michigan's Media Union Library. He now works at the University of Michigan Library as coordinator of Deep Blue, the university's institutional repository. Ottaviani's interest in writing science-related comics was inspired by Richard Rhodes's book The Making of the Atomic Bomb. In discussing the book with comic book artistSteve Lieber, the two decided to write and illustrate a famous meeting between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg during World War II. That project expanded to include other stories from the history of science to become the graphic novelTwo-Fisted Science, including stories written by Ottaviani and illustrated by a variety of artists. Since the publication of Two-Fisted Science, Ottaviani has gone on to write several other comic books about scientists, including Dignifying Science, Fallout, Suspended in Language and Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards. These works are all self-published by Ottaviani's own company, G. T. Labs, which he started in 1996. The company's name is an homage to General Techtronics Labs, the fictional company where comic book character Peter Parker was bitten by the radioactive spider that led to his becoming Spider-Man. Two of Ottaviani's most recent works Levitation and Wire Mothers are the beginning of a planned series on "the science of the unscientific." Levitation the physical and psychological aspects of stage magic. Wire Mothers is tells the story of psychologist Harry Harlow's work in the 1950s on importance of love and affection among primates, in contravention of then-prevailing theories put forward by the Behavioristschool of thought. In addition to his self-published work, Ottaviani has worked on two short comic books about orangutans, one of which was published by the Orangutan Foundation International. He also has two forthcoming comics in the works to be published by First Second Books, one on physicist Richard Feynman and another on three primatologists: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas. On August 31, 2011, Ottaviani appeared on the Science Channel's . On November 15, 2013, First Second announced that it would publish Ottaviani's upcoming biography of Stephen Hawking with illustrations by Leland Myrick. In June 2014, Tor.com released Ottaviani and Leland Purvis' Alan Turing biography, The Imitation Game, for free online. An expanded, print version of the book appeared in 2016.
Awards
Ottaviani's 2001 graphic novel Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb was nominated for the 2002 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel or Collection. Dignifying Science: Stories about Women Scientists was nominated for a 1999 Eisner Award and for the 2000 Lulu Award. The 2003 Quantum entanglement, spooky action at a distance, teleportation, and you was nominated for the 2004 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic. Ottaviani was also awarded a 1997 Xeric Foundation grant for Two-Fisted Science.
