Alan Lightman

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Alan Lightman
File:Alanlightman.jpg
Born (1948-11-28) November 28, 1948 (age 75)
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Nationality American
Fields Physics
Creative writing
Institutions Professor of the Practice of the Humanities, MIT
Director of Harpswell Foundation
Alma mater Princeton University (A.B.)
California Institute of Technology (Ph.D.)

Alan Paige Lightman (born November 28, 1948) is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor of humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. Einstein's Dreams has been adapted into dozens of independent theatrical productions and is one of the most widely used "common books" on college campuses. Lightman was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities. He is also the founder of the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia.

Biography

Lightman was born in Memphis, Tennessee. His father was Richard Lightman, a movie theater owner, and his mother, Jeanne Garretson, a dancing teacher and volunteer Braille typist. He is one of four brothers, including Big Star bass guitarist John Lightman.[1]

From an early age, he was interested in both science and the arts and, while in high school, began independent science projects and writing poetry. His unusual combination of talents in both science and creative writing drew attention as he won city and statewide science fairs as well as the statewide competition for the National Council of Teachers of English award. He graduated from White Station High School in Memphis. Lightman received his AB degree in physics from Princeton University in 1970, magna cum laude, where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1974, where he had received a National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship. His thesis advisor was relativist Kip Thorne. From 1974 to 1976, Lightman was a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at Cornell University. During this period, he began publishing poetry in small literary magazines. He was an Assistant Professor of astronomy at Harvard University from 1976 to 1979 and from 1979 to 1989 a research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 1989, Lightman was appointed professor of science and writing and senior lecturer in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in science and the humanities. In 1995, he was appointed John Burchard Professor of Humanities at MIT, a position that he resigned in 2002 to allow himself more time for writing. He currently teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Professor of the Practice of the Humanities. In the late 1990s, Lightman chaired a committee at MIT that established a new Communication Requirement at MIT, requiring each undergraduate to have a writing and speaking course each of his or her four years at MIT. In 2002, Lightman and playwright Alan Brody launched a monthly salon of scientists and theater artists from the greater Boston area to discuss questions of mutual interest to scientists and artists. The salon ran for ten years, out of which was created the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT, a partnership between MIT and the Central Square Theater in Cambridge. The Collaborative has created and sponsored a number of new plays that embrace the culture of science. In 2003, Lightman founded the nonprofit Harpswell Foundation, whose mission is to empower a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia and the developing world. Since then, Lightman has been chair of the board of that organization. In 2015, Lightman was named to the International Council of Advisors of the Asian University for Women.

Scientific work

In his scientific work, Lightman has made fundamental contributions to the theory of astrophysical processes under extreme temperatures and densities. In particular, his research has focused on relativistic gravitation theory, the structure and behavior of accretion disks, stellar dynamics, radiative processes, and relativistic plasmas. Some of his significant achievements are his discovery, with Douglas Eardley, of a structural instability in orbiting disks of matter, called accretion disks, that form around massive condensed objects such as black holes, with wide application in astronomy;[2] his proof, with David L. Lee, that all gravitation theories obeying the Weak Equivalence Principle (the experimentally verified fact that all objects fall with the same acceleration in a gravitational field) must be metric theories of gravity, that is, must describe gravity as a geometrical warping of time and space;[3] his discovery, independently of Roland Svensson of Sweden, of the negative heat behavior of optically thin, hot thermal plasmas dominated by electron-positron pairs, that is, the result that adding energy to thin hot gases causes their temperature to decrease rather than increase;[4] and his work on unusual radiation processes, such as unsaturated inverse Compton scattering, in thermal media, also with wide application in astrophysics.[5] His research articles have appeared in Physical Review, The Astrophysical Journal, Reviews of Modern Physics, Nature, and other journals. In 1990 he chaired the science panel of the National Academy of Sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee. He is a past chair of the High Energy Division of the American Astronomical Society.

Literary work

In 1981, Lightman began publishing essays about science, the human side of science, and the "mind of science", beginning with Smithsonian and moving to Science 82, The New Yorker, and other magazines. Since that time, Lightman's essays, short fiction, and reviews have also appeared in The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, Dædalus, Discover, Exploratorium, Granta, Harper's Magazine, Harvard Magazine, Inc Technology, Nature, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, "Salon", Science 86, The Sciences, Story, Technology Review, and World Monitor.

Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 PEN New England / Boston Globe Winship Award. Einstein's Dreams was also the March 1998 selection for National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Book Club. The novel has been used in numerous colleges and universities, in many cases for university-wide adoptions in "common-book" programs, and is one of the mostly widely used texts in American colleges today. Lightman's novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award in fiction and has been adopted by high school teachers of Advanced Placement English. In 2007 Lightman released his novel, Ghost, an examination of the dichotomies of the physical world and the spiritual world, scepticism and faith, the natural and the supernatural, and science and religion. His novel Mr g, published in 2012, is the story of creation as told by God. Mr g has recently been adapted for the stage by Wesley Savick and will have its first performance at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge in the Spring of 2015. In 2009, Lightman published his first volume of poetry, a book-length narrative in verse titled "Song of Two Worlds." Lightman's essays on science have frequently appeared in anthologies of the best science writing of the year, and his essay "The Accidental Universe," was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best essays of the year for 2011.

More than two dozen independent theatrical and musical productions have been based on Einstein's Dreams, including a production at Chicago's National Pastime Theater in 2000, produced and directed by Patrizia Acerra and Dawn Arnold; a production at Paradise Theater in New York in 2001, produced and directed by Paul Stancato and Brian Rhinehart; a production at the Culture Project Theater in New York in 2003, directed by Rebecca Holderness; a production at the People's Branch Theater in Nashville in 2003, adapted by Brian Niece and David Alford, directed by David Alford; a musical production at the Martin Segal Theater of CUNY in New York in 2003, produced by Brian Schwartz with music and lyrics by Joshua Rosenblum and Joanne Lessner; a production by the Underground Railway Theater in Boston in 2006; and a production by the University of Memphis in 2006, under the direction of Gloria Baxter; a musical composition titled "In This World" by Paul Hoffman in 2000 and performed by the Silverwood Trio on their own CD; and a musical composition titled "When Einstein Dreams" by Nando Michelin in 2003 and performed by the Nando Michelin Group on a Double Times Record CD.

Other major projects

In 2003, Lightman founded the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia and the developing world, specifically through housing, education, and leadership training. See the recent article in The New Global Citizen. The Foundation is funded from the donations of private individuals, foundations, and corporations. All major projects of the Foundation so far have taken place in Cambodia, a country in desperate need after essentially all of its educated class were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. In June 2005, the Harpswell Foundation completed a four-room school building in the village of Tramung Chrum, about 50 miles from Phnom Penh. In July 2006, the Foundation completed a dormitory and leadership center for college women in Phnom Penh, which allows outstanding women to attend college. This dormitory serves all the colleges in Phnom Penh and is one of the first dormitories for women in Cambodia. Not having a safe place to live while attending college has been the major obstacle preventing young women from outside Phnom Penh (over 90% of the population) to receive a college education. Colleges in Cambodia do not provide housing for their students. Male students can live in the Buddhist temples, but female students cannot. The dormitory and leadership center houses 36 women, who have been selected on the basis of their intelligence, ambition, and leadership potential. In addition to providing free housing, food, and medical care, the facility gives these young women free classes in English and computer skills; readings and discussion of current events in Cambodia and the world to develop their critical thinking skills; and a weekly leadership seminar. In 2010, the Harpswell Foundation completed a second dormitory and leadership center for college women in Phnom Penh, housing 48 young women. The new facility has a large conference room, called the Hall of Great Women, where we hold national conferences on the theme of women's empowerment. For further information, please see the website of the Harpswell Foundation.

Awards and honors

  • Screening Room named by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2015
  • Sydney Award for the best essays of 2011, awarded for "The Accidental Universe," Harper's Magazine, December 2011
  • Finalist for 2000 National Book Award in fiction for The Diagnosis
  • Finalist for the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award for A Sense of the Mysterious
  • Association of American Publishers' Award for best science book of 1990 for Origins
  • Literary Light of the Boston Public Library
  • Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Bowdoin College in 2005
  • Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Memphis College of Arts in 2006
  • Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Maryland, Baltimore Country in 2006
  • Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell in 2010
  • Birthday Salute by Garrison Keillor on NPR, November 28, 2012
  • Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 1996 Andrew Gemant Award of the American Institute of Physics for linking science and the humanities
  • Distinguished Alumni Award of the California Institute of Technology in 2003
  • Distinguished Arts and Humanities Medal for Literature of the Germantown Arts Alliance of Tennessee in 2003
  • 2006 John P. McGovern Science and Society Award by Sigma Xi
  • Gold Medal for humanitarian service to Cambodia, awarded by the government of Cambodia

Partial bibliography

Short fiction

Books

  • Problem book in Relativity and Gravitation / Alan P. Lightman, W. H. Press, R. H. Price and S. A. Teukolsky. – Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, (1975). – ISBN 0-691-08160-3
  • Radiative Processes in Astrophysics / George B. Rybicki, Alan P. Lightman. – New York : Wiley, (1979). – (A Wiley-Interscience publication). Rev edition (2004): ISBN 0-471-82759-2
  • Revealing the Universe : Prediction and Proof in Astronomy / edited by James Cornell and Alan P. Lightman. – Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982 ISBN 0-262-03080-2
  • Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe / Alan P. Lightman ; with ten illustrations by Laszlo Kubinyi. – New York : Scribner, 1984. – ISBN 0-684-18112-6
  • A Modern Day Yankee in a Connecticut Court : and Other Essays on Science. – New York : Viking Press, 1986. – ISBN 0-670-81239-0
  • Origins : the Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists / Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer. – Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1990. – ISBN 0-674-64470-0
  • Ancient Light : Our Changing View of the Universe. – Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1991. – ISBN 0-674-03362-0
  • Great Ideas in Physics. – New York : McGraw-Hill, 1992. – ISBN 0-07-037935-1
  • Time for the Stars : Astronomy in the 1990s. – New York, Viking Press, 1992. – ISBN 0-670-83976-0
  • Einstein's Dreams. – New York : Pantheon Books, 1993. – ISBN 0-679-41646-3
  • Good Benito. – New York : Pantheon Books, 1994. – ISBN 0-679-43614-6
  • Dance for Two : Selected Essays. – New York : Pantheon Books, 1996. – ISBN 0-679-75877-1
  • Great Ideas in Physics, 2nd ed. – New York : McGraw-Hill, 1997. – ISBN 0-07-038048-1
  • Great Ideas in Physics : the Conservation of Energy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Theory of Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. – 3rd ed. – New York : McGraw-Hill, 2000. – ISBN 0-07-135738-6
  • The Diagnosis. – New York : Pantheon Books, 2000. – ISBN 0-375-72550-4
  • The World is Too Much with Me : Finding Private Space in the Wired World. – Toronto : Hart House, University of Toronto, 2002. – (The Hart House lecture ; 2). – ISBN 0-9694382-2-2
  • Reunion. – New York : Pantheon Books, 2003. – ISBN 0-375-42167-X
  • Living With the Genie : Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery / edited by Alan Lightman, Daniel Sarewitz, Christina Desser. – Washington, DC : Island Press, 2003. – ISBN 1-55963-419-7
  • Heart of the Horse / photographs by Juliet Van Otteren ; foreword by Jane Goodall ; text by Alan Lightman. – New York : Barnes & Noble, 2004. – ISBN 0-7607-5927-8
  • The Discoveries : Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science. – New York : Pantheon Books, 2005. – ISBN 0-375-42168-8
  • A Sense of the Mysterious : Science and the Human Spirit. – New York : Pantheon Books, 2005. – ISBN 0-375-42320-6
  • Ghost. – New York : Pantheon Books, October 2007. – ISBN 978-0-375-42169-3
  • Song of Two Worlds. – Natick MA : AK Peters, 2009. – ISBN 978-1-56881-463-6
  • Mr g – New York, Pantheon Books, January 2012 – ISBN 978-0-307-37999-3
  • The Accidental Universe - Pantheon Books 2014 - ISBN 978-0-307-90858-2
  • Screening Room - Pantheon Books 2015

Articles

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  • "A Brief Version of Time", The New York Times, Op-Ed Page, February 8, 1993.
  • "My Back Pages," Boston Globe, Book Section, April 24, 1994.
  • "The Uncertainty Principle," Technology Review, April 1996; also published under the title "Seasons"
  • "Hallelujah," in A Place Within, ed. Jodi Daynard (New York: W.W. Norton) (1996)
  • "The Contradictory Genius," The New York Review of Books, March 20, 1997.
  • "A Cataclysm of Thought" The Atlantic Monthly, January 1999.
  • "One Stuff," Harvard Magazine, July–August 1999.
  • "In God's Place," The New York Times Magazine, September 19, 1999.
  • "The Public Intellectual," MIT Symposium with Steven Pinker, December 2, 1999
  • "The Writing Life," The Washington Post, Book World, April 23, 2000.
  • "Portrait of the Writer as a Young Scientist," The New York Times, Science Times, May 9, 2000.
  • "Capturing the Light," The New York Times, Op-Ed page, February 7, 2001.
  • "In the Name of Love?," Nature, October 8, 2001.
  • "Prisoners of the Wired World," Globe and Mail (Canada), March 16, 2002.
  • "Megaton Man," New York Review of Books, May 23, 2002.
  • "The Art of Science," New Scientist, December 28, 2002.
  • "The Lure of Genius," Seed, Jan/Feb 2003.
  • "Art that Transfigures Science," The New York Times, Arts and Ideas, March 15, 2003.
  • "The World is Too Much with Me" in Living with the Genie, ed. Chris Deser, Alan Lightman, and Daniel Sarewitz
  • "A Sense of the Mysterious," Daedalus, Fall 2003
  • "Spellbound by the Eternal Riddle," The New York Times, Science Times, November 11, 2003
  • "The Power of Books " (Letter from Cambodia), Boston Globe, Op-Ed, January 18, 2004
  • "Einstein and Newton," Scientific American, September 2004
  • "The Twilight Zone," in Prime Time, ed. Douglas Bauer (New York: Crown) (2004)
  • "A Tale of Two Loves," Nature, March 17, 2005
  • "The Second Law of Thermodynamics," Physics Today, May 2005
  • "Red, White, and Bamboo," (Second Letter from Cambodia), The New York Times, Op-Ed Page, July 5, 2005
  • "Wheels of Fortune," Science & Spirit, May–June 2006
  • Tick Tock Watch the Clock, Globe and Mail, March 10, 2007
  • "Does God Exist?: The case for reconciling the scientific with the divine - and against the anti-religion of Richard Dawkins" Salon.com, October 2, 2011
  • "The Accidental Universe," Harper's Magazine, December 2011
  • "The Temporary Universe," Tin House magazine, issue 51, Spring 2012
  • "Our Place in the Universe," Harper's Magazine, December 2012
  • "The Symmetrical Universe," Orion Magazine, March/April 2013
  • "Longing for Permanence in a Fleeting Universe," Wall Street Journal, Speakeasy, February 13, 2014
  • "Science and Religion," review of "Why Science Does not Disprove God," Washington Post, April 10, 2014
  • "Our Lonely Home in Nature," New York Times, May 2, 2014[6]
  • "Nothingness," Nautilus, August 28, 2014
  • "Attention," The New Yorker, October 1, 2014
  • "Harpswell Foundation Enables Education for Women in Cambodia," The New Global Citizen, August 4, 2015
  • "The Ghost House of My Childhood" The New York Times Sunday Review, August 23, 2015
  • "Splitting the Moon" Guernica, September 15. 2015

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 187, pg. L1 (1974)
  3. ↑ Physical Review D, vol. 8, pg. 364 (1973)
  4. ↑ Astrophysical Journal, vol. 253, pg. 842 (1982)
  5. ↑ Nature, vol. 262, pg. 196 (1976)
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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