Lawrence M. Krauss

Not to be confused with economist Lawrence B. Krause .

Lawrence M. Krauss
Krauss at the Australian National University, 30 September 2010
Born	27 May 1954 (1954-05-27)
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 a Canadian-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 A Universe from Nothing. He is an advocate of scientific skepticism, science education, and the science of morality.

Biography

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 was awarded a 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 a university initiative, the Origins Project. In 2009 he helped inaugurate this initiative with the Origins Symposium, in which eighty scientists participated and three thousand 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. 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.

Krauss also is a critic of string theory, which he discusses in his 2005 book, Hiding in the Mirror. Another book released in March 2011 was entitled, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, and a major new book released in January 2012, is entitled, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, with an afterword by Richard Dawkins. This became a New York Times Bestseller within a week of its release. A foreword written by Christopher Hitchens was planned originally, but Hitchens died before it could be finished.

Scientific work

Working mostly in theoretical (as opposed to experimental) physics, 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 and energy of the universe resides in empty space, an idea now widely known as dark energy.

Honors

Krauss is one of the few living physicists referred to by Scientific American as, a "public intellectual", and he 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.

During December 2011, Krauss was named as a non-voting honorary board member for the Center for Inquiry.

Publications

Krauss has authored or co-authored more than three hundred scientific studies and review articles on cosmology and theoretical physics. His popular books include:

Lawrence M. Krauss

• The Fifth Essence (1991) ISBN 0-465-02377-0
• Fear of Physics (1994) ISBN 0-465-02367-3
• The Physics of Star Trek (1995) ISBN 0-465-00559-4
• Beyond Star Trek (1997) ISBN 0-06-097757-4
• Quintessence (2001) ISBN 0-465-03741-0
• Atom (2002) ISBN 0-316-18309-1
• Hiding in the Mirror (2005) ISBN 0-670-03395-2
• Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science (W. W. Norton / Atlas & Co., 2010) ISBN 978-0-393-06471-1
• A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (Free Press, 2012) ISBN 978-1451624458

Awards

• Gravity Research Foundation First prize award (1984)
• Presidential Investigator Award (1986)
• American Association for the Advancement of Science's Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology (2000)
• Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize (2001)
• Andrew Gemant Award (2001)
• American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award (2002)
• Oersted Medal (2003)
• American Physical Society Joseph P. Burton Forum Award (2005)
• Center for Inquiry World Congress Science in the Public Interest Award (2009)
• Helen Sawyer Hogg Prize of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Astronomical Society of Canada (2009)

External links

• Arizona State University faculty listing
• Lawrence M. Krauss at the Internet Movie Database