Leonard Mlodinow
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Leonard Mlodinow (born 1954 in Chicago) is a physicist and writer. While a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, and on the faculty at Caltech, he developed (with N. Papanicolaou) a new type of perturbation theory for eigenvalue problems in quantum mechanics. Later, as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysik in Munich, Germany, he did pioneering work (with M. Hillery) on the quantum theory of dielectric media. Apart from his research and books on popular science, he has also been a scriptwriter for television series including Star Trek: The Next Generation and MacGyver, and co-authored (with Matt Costello) a children's chapter book series entitled "The Kids of Einstein Elementary." Leonard Mlodinow is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Caltech, and working on a new book with Stephen Hawking, entitled "The Grand Design." A departure from Hawking's other titles, "The Grand Design" is said to explore both the question of the existence of the universe and the issue of why the laws of physics are what they are.
[edit] Works
Euclid's Window (ISBN 0-684-86523-8) is a work on popular science that chronicles the idea of curved space and the history of geometry. It had a mixed reception and has now been translated into nine languages.
Feynman's Rainbow (as published in USA) (ISBN 0-446-53045-X), later published in the UK as Some Time with Feynman (ISBN 0-7139-9643-9) is about his relationship with Richard Feynman, during his post-doctoral years in Caltech, in the early eighties. The book offers an insight into Feynman's attitude towards physics and life, his relationship with Murray Gell-Mann and the rise of String Theory.
A Briefer History of Time (ISBN 0-553-80436-7), with Stephen Hawking, an international best-seller that has appeared in 25 languages.
