Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman
Born (1948-11-28) November 28, 1948
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 the practice of the 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. He is also on the Board of Advisors of Primary Source, a nonprofit that works to raise global awareness in high school student in Massachusetts, and he is on the Editorial Board of Undark, an online magazine about science and society.

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. More than one hundred independent theatrical, dance, video, and musical productions have been based on Einstein's Dreams around the world. The book 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. His book by the same name was chosen by Brainpickings as one of the ten best books of 2014. His book Screening Room, a slightly fictionalized memoir, was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year.

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 regime 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

Partial bibliography

Short fiction

Books

Articles

References

  1. ↑ Jovanovic, Rob (September 28, 2005), Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop, Chicago Review Press, p. 139, ISBN 1556525966
  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)

External links

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