Janna Levin
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Janna J. Levin (born 1967) is a theoretical cosmologist. She holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology granted in 1993 and a Bachelor of Arts in Astronomy and Physics from Barnard College granted in 1988. [1]. Her work predicts a finite universe and uses techniques from topology and fractals to demonstrate this. Other work includes black holes and chaos. Since January of 2004, she has been an assistant professor in astronomy and physics at Barnard College. A little known fact is that she did not graduate from high school officially, as she was in a serious car accident and hospitalised for a time.
Levin is the author of the popular science book How the Universe Got Its Spots (2002). In 2006 she published A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, a historical novel featuring Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing as characters. This book won several awards, including the prestigious PEN/Bingham Fellowship Prize for Writers, The MEA Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work, and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Prize.
She appeared as a guest on Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show The Colbert Report on August 24, 2006.