| Lawrence M. Krauss | |
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Krauss at the Australian National University, 30 September 2010
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| Born | 27 May 1954 |
| Nationality | American/Canadian |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | Arizona State University Yale University Case Western Reserve University Harvard University |
| Alma mater | Carleton University (B.Sc.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.) |
Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American theoretical physicist who is professor of physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and director of the Origins Project at the Arizona State University. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and Atom. He is an advocate of scientific skepticism,[1] science education, and the science of morality.[2]
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Krauss was born in New York City and shortly thereafter moved to Toronto, Canada, where he spent his childhood. On January 19, 1980 he married Katherine Kelley, a native of Nova Scotia. Their daughter Lilli was born November 23, 1984. Krauss and Kelley separated in 2010. Krauss received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics with first class honours from Carleton University in 1977, and his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982.
After some time in the Harvard Society of Fellows, he became an assistant professor at Yale University in 1985 and Associate Professor in 1988. He was named the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, professor of astronomy, and was Chairman of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University from 1993 to 2005. In 2006, Krauss led the initiative for the no confidence vote against Case Western Reserve University's President Edward Hundert and Provost Anderson, which was approved on March 2, 2006 by the College of Arts and Sciences (Hundert: 131 for / 44 against; Anderson: 97 for / 68 against).
In August 2008 he joined the faculty at Arizona State University as Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Director of the University's Origins Project.[3] In 2009 he helped inaugurate this initiative with the Origins Symposium,[4] in which 80 scientists participated and 3000 people attended.
He appears in national media for public outreach in science and has written editorials for The New York Times. His opposition to intelligent design gained national prominence as a result of his 2004 appearance before the state school board of Ohio.[5] He currently serves on the advisory board of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government.
He attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium in November 2006 and again in October 2008. He also served on Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign science policy committee. In 2008 he was named co-president of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In 2010 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Federation of American Scientists, and in June 2011 it was announced that he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.[6]
Krauss is also a critic of string theory, which he takes on in his 2005 book, Hiding in the Mirror.[7] His newest book, released in March 2011, is entitled Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, and a major new book is forthcoming in Jan 2012, entitled A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, with foreword by Christopher Hitchens and afterword by Richard Dawkins.
Krauss' work has been primarily in theoretical (as opposed to experimental) physics, and he has published research on a great variety of topics within that field. His primary contribution is to cosmology, as he was one of the first physicists to suggest that most of the mass/energy of the universe resides in empty space, an idea now widely known as dark energy.[7][8]
Krauss is one of the few living physicists that Scientific American has referred to as a "public intellectual",[8] and is the only physicist to have received awards from all three major U.S. physics societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics.[9]
Krauss has authored or co-authored over 300 scientific studies and review articles on cosmology and theoretical physics. His popular books include: