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.
[2]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.
[3]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 ScientistsBoard of Sponsors.
[4]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".
[2][8] In 2009, he helped inaugurate this initiative at the Origins Symposium, in which eighty scientists participated and three thousand people attended.
[9]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.
[10]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.
[11] 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.
[12]Krauss is a critic of
string theory, which he discusses in his 2005 book
Hiding in the Mirror.
[13] 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".
[14][15] 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.
[16][17] 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.
[18]source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss