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| Born: Jan 24, 1947 in San Jose, CA, USA. |
| Fields: Physics, Science Comm. |
Biography
Michio Kaku is an American (born to Japanese immigrants with Tibetan ancestry) theoretical physicist and science communicator. He is responsible for popularizing his field of science with a number of famous books, including the New York Time bestsellers Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physics of the Future (2010). He has hosted specials on BBC, the Discovery Channel, Science Channel and History Channel.
As a high school student, Kaku built a particle accelerator in his parents’ garage. This earned him a Hertz Engineering Scholarship. He graduated from Harvard University at the top of his physics class before moving on to obtaining a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and a lectureship from Princeton, both in 1972.
As someone who played a key role in setting up American anti-nuclear defenses, Kaku was always vocal about his concerns with nuclear weapons and nuclear power, as well as global warming. Even though he shares a lot of his colleagues beliefs about the future of humanity lying in extrasolar planets, he has often criticized NASA for the methods he considered cost-innefective. One of his biggest concerns was the 72 lb (33 kg) of plutonium used on the Hughes-Cassini Space Probe, which he feared could be dispersed into the atmosphere in the event of a malfunction during atmospheric re-entry.
Kaku is currently the host of Explorations, a weekly radio show dealing with general topics in war, peace, science and environment.
Awards
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2008: American Associations of Physics Teachers Klopsteg Memorial Award.
Books
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