Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and director of its Origins Project.
He is an advocate of the public understanding of science, of public policy based on sound empirical data, of scientific skepticism and of science education, and works to reduce the influence of what he regards as superstition and religious dogma in popular culture.
Krauss is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek (1995) and A Universe from Nothing (2012), and chaired the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board of Sponsors.
Video Lawrence M. Krauss
Early life and education
Krauss was born in New York City, but spent his childhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was raised in a Jewish household. Krauss received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics with first class honours at Carleton University (Ottawa) in 1977, and was awarded a Ph.D. in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982.
Maps Lawrence M. Krauss
Career
After some time in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Krauss 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 M. Hundert and provost John L. Anderson by the College of Arts and Sciences faculty. On March 2, 2006, both no-confidence votes were carried: 131-44 against Hundert and 97-68 against Anderson.
In August 2008, Krauss joined the faculty at Arizona State University as a Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He also became the Director of the Origins Project, a university initiative "created to explore humankind's most fundamental questions about our origins". In 2009, he helped inaugurate this initiative at the Origins Symposium, in which eighty scientists participated and three thousand people attended.
Krauss appears in the media both at home and abroad to facilitate public outreach in science. He has also written editorials for The New York Times. As a result of his appearance in 2002 before the state school board of Ohio, his opposition to intelligent design has gained national prominence.
Krauss attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposia in November 2006 and October 2008. He served on the science policy committee for Barack Obama's first (2008) presidential campaign and, also in 2008, 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, he joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a private college in London. In 2013, he accepted a part-time professorship at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Physics Department of the Australian National University.
Krauss is a critic of string theory, which he discusses in his 2005 book Hiding in the Mirror. In his 2012 book A Universe from Nothing Krauss says about string theory "we still have no idea if this remarkable theoretical edifice actually has anything to do with the real world". Another book, released in March 2011, titled Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, while A Universe from Nothing --with an afterword by Richard Dawkins--was released in January 2012 and became a New York Times bestseller within a week. Originally, its foreword was to have been written by Christopher Hitchens, but Hitchens grew too ill to complete it. The paperback version of the book appeared in January 2013 with a new question-and-answer section and a preface integrating the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC. On March 21, 2017, his newest book, 'The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?' was released in hardcover, paperback, and audio version.
A July 2012 article in Newsweek, written by Krauss, indicates how the Higgs particle is related to our understanding of the Big Bang. He also wrote a longer piece in the New York Times explaining the science behind and significance of the particle.
Allegations of sexual misconduct
In a February 2018 article whose allegations "range from offensive comments to groping and non-consensual sexual advances", BuzzFeed reported a variety of sexual misconduct claims against Krauss. Krauss responded that the article was "slanderous" and "factually incorrect".
In response to the BuzzFeed article, Arizona State University stated that it had received no complaints related to Krauss from students, faculty or staff, but would begin an internal investigation, calling for anyone with concerns to express them. Krauss has been a professor at ASU since 2008. Several organizations also canceled scheduled talks by Krauss. Krauss resigned from the position of chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board of Sponsors, to avoid "[distracting] from the ability of the Bulletin to effectively carry out [its] work". On March 6, 2018, Arizona State University placed Krauss on paid leave "to avoid further disruption to the normal course of business as the university continues to gather facts about the allegations".
In a public statement linked to and quoted by The New York Times and others, Krauss apologized "to anyone he made feel intimidated or uncomfortable", but stated that the BuzzFeed article "ignored counter-evidence, distorted the facts and made absurd claims about me".
Scientific work
Krauss mostly works in theoretical physics and has published research on a great variety of topics within that field. His primary contribution is to cosmology as 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", as well as his many contributions to the attempt to understand the origin and nature of dark matter, and methods for its detection. Furthermore, Krauss has formulated a model in which the Universe could have potentially come from "nothing", as outlined in his 2012 book A Universe from Nothing. He explains that certain arrangements of relativistic quantum fields might explain the existence of the Universe as we know it while disclaiming that he "has no idea if the notion [of taking quantum mechanics for granted] can be usefully dispensed with". As his model appears to agree with experimental observations of the Universe (such as its shape and energy density), it is referred to as a "plausible hypothesis". However, his model has been opposed by cosmologist George Ellis and mathematical physicist I.S. Kohli who have argued that many of his claims pertaining to A Universe from Nothing "are not supported in full by modern general relativity theory or quantum field theory in curved spacetime".
Initially, Krauss was skeptical of the existence of the Higgs boson. However, after it was confirmed by CERN, he has been researching the implications of the Higgs field on the nature of dark energy.
Activism
Krauss has argued that public policy debates in the United States should have a greater focus on science, He criticized Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's statements on science, writing that Carson's remarks "suggest he never learned or chooses to ignore basic, well-tested scientific concepts".
Krauss has described himself as an antitheist and takes part in public debates on religion. Krauss is featured in the 2013 documentary The Unbelievers, in which he and Richard Dawkins travel across the globe speaking publicly about the importance of science and reason as opposed to religion and superstition. He has participated in many debates with religious apologists, including William Lane Craig.
In his book A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (2012), Krauss discusses the premise that something cannot come from nothing, which has often been used as an argument for the existence of a prime mover. He has since argued in a debate with John Ellis and Don Cupitt that the laws of physics allow for the Universe to be created from nothing. "What would be the characteristics of a universe that was created from nothing, just with the laws of physics and without any supernatural shenanigans? The characteristics of the universe would be precisely those of the ones we live in." In an interview with The Atlantic, however, he states that he has never claimed that "questions about origins are over". According to Krauss, "I don't ever claim to resolve that infinite regress of why-why-why-why-why; as far as I'm concerned it's turtles all the way down".
Honors
In an interview with Krauss in the Scientific American, science writer Claudia Dreifus called Krauss "one of the few top physicists who is also known as a public intellectual". Krauss is one of very few to have received awards from all three major American physics societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics. In 2012, he was awarded the National Science Board's Public Service Medal for his contributions to public education in science and engineering in the United States.
During December 2011, Krauss was named as a non-voting honorary board member for the Center for Inquiry. The Center suspended its association with Krauss in March 2018 in relation to allegations of sexual misconduct, "pending further information".
Bibliography
Krauss has authored or co-authored more than three hundred scientific studies and review articles on cosmology and theoretical physics.
Books
- The Fifth Essence (1989), Basic Books, ISBN 978-0465023752
- Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed (1994), Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02367-3
- The Physics of Star Trek (1996), Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-00559-4
- Beyond Star Trek: Physics from Alien Invasions to the End of Time (1998), Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0060977573
- Quintessence: The Search for Missing Mass in the Universe (2000), Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03741-0
- Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth...and Beyond (2001), Black Bay, ISBN 0-316-18309-1
- Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String Theory and Beyond (2005), Viking, ISBN 0-670-03395-2
- Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science (2011), Norton and Co. ISBN 978-0-393-06471-1
- A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (2012), Atria Books, ISBN 978-1-4516-2445-8
- The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here? (2017), Atria Books, ISBN 978-1-4767-7761-0
Contributor
- 100 Things to Do Before You Die (plus a few to do afterwards). 2004. Profile Books.
- The Religion and Science Debate: Why Does It Continue? 2009. Yale Press.
Articles
- The Energy of Empty Space that isn't Zero. 2006. Edge.org
- A dark future for cosmology. 2007. Physics World.
- The End of Cosmology. 2008. Scientific American.
- The return of a static universe and the end of cosmology. 2008. International journal of modern physics.
- Late time behavior of false vacuum decay: Possible implications for cosmology and metastable inflating states. 2008. Physical Review Letters.
- Krauss, Lawrence M. (June 2010). "Why I love neutrinos". Scientific American. 302 (6): 19. Bibcode:2010SciAm.302f..34K. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0610-34.
Media
Documentary films
- The Unbelievers (2013)
- The Principle (2014)
- The Choice is Ours on YouTube (2016)
- Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)
Television
- How the Universe Works (2010-)
Films
- London Fields (2015) (cameo)
- Salt and Fire (2016)
Awards
- Gravity Research Foundation First Prize Award in the 1984 Essay Competition
- 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)
- Physics World Book of the Year 2011 for Quantum Man
- National Science Board 2012 Public Service Award and Medal (2012)
- Premio Roma "Urbs Universalis", Rome (2013)
- Elected as Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism (2013)
- AFO (Academia Film Olomouc) Award for Outstanding Personal Contribution to the Popularization of Science, 49th Annual AFO Festival April 19, 2014. Olomouc, Czech Republic
- Gravity Research Foundation First Prize Award in the 2014 Essay Competition
- Humanist of the Year, 2015, American Humanist Association
- Richard Dawkins Award 2016, Atheist Alliance of America.
- Emperor Has No Clothes Award 2016, Freedom from Religion Foundation
References
External links
- Arizona State University faculty listing
- Origins Project
- Articles on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
- Articles on The New Yorker
- Lawrence M. Krauss on Twitter
- Lawrence M. Krauss on IMDb
- Lawrence Krauss interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network
- Krauss debates why there is something rather than nothing
- Debate on role of science and philosophy with philosopher Julian Baggini
- Debate on the origins of the Universe with CERN physicist John Ellis and Cambridge theologian Don Cupitt
- Prof. Krauss has an Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath number of 8
Source of article : Wikipedia
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