Brian Greene is a physicist who has been working on quantum gravity and unified theories for nearly two decades. He is widely recognized for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in the field and also for his lucid presentations of cutting-edge research to scientists and fellow physicists as well as to general audiences.

His books, The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, both spent six months on The New York Times bestsellers list and have received much critical acclaim. The Elegant Universe was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of the 2000 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It has sold more than a million copies worldwide and has been translated into 35 languages. In its starred review of The Fabric of the Cosmos, Publishers Weekly hailed “Greene’s unparalleled ability to translate higher mathematics and its findings into everyday language and images, through the adept use of metaphor and analogy, and crisp, witty prose.” The New York Times concurred, saying that Greene’s book “sends the reader’s imagination hurtling through the universe on an astonishing ride,” and The Washington Post calls Greene “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.”

Greene became the first physicist to edit the prestigious series, The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006. In his introduction, Greene wrote, “Willful ignorance of science is not okay. We are living through a radical cultural shift, once in which science and technology play an increasingly pervasive role in everyday life . . . A scientifically literate public is, plainly, increasingly vital.”

Professor Greene received his undergraduate training at Harvard University where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1984. He went on to graduate school at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and received his doctorate in 1986. From 1987-90, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, and in 1990 he joined the faculty of Cornell University as an assistant professor. By 1995 he had been promoted to tenured associate and then full professor, along the way winning an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. In 1996, Professor Greene left Cornell to join Columbia University, where he holds a full professorship in both the Physics and the Mathematics Departments. He has lectured in more than 25 countries at both a general and a technical level.

His research interests focus on the quantum mechanical properties of space and time. In 1990, Dr. Greene and a Harvard colleague discovered mirror symmetry — a remarkable property of string theory that has launched a vibrant field of research in both mathematics and physics. In 1993 and subsequently in 1995, Dr. Greene and his colleagues discovered topology change. Whereas Einstein’s general relativity shows that the fabric of space can stretch in time (resulting in our expanding universe), it does not allow the fabric to rip. To the contrary, Dr. Greene and his colleagues showed that in string theory — by including quantum mechanics — the fabric of space can tear, establishing that the universe can evolve in far more dramatic ways than Einstein had envisioned. Currently, Greene is co-director of Columbia's ISCAP (Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics) and is leading a research program studying the cosmological implications of string theory.

In the Fall of 2003, Dr. Greene hosted the three-part NOVA special The Elegant Universe, which won an Emmy Award and a 2004 Peabody Award for broadcast excellence. The NOVA website received nearly two million hits during the three day airing of the show.

He is currently working with Robert LePage to develop his "Strings and Strings" collaboration with The Emerson Quartet for a series of performances at Lincoln Center in 2008. Greene is also organizing the first annual World Science Festival, a weeklong extravaganza that will allow the general public to explore science, from cutting-edge research to works in theatre, film, and the arts inspired by scientific ideas. The festival will be held in New York City in 2008.