American · b. 1955
Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist born in New York City in 1955. He studied at Hampshire College and received his PhD from Harvard. He held posts at Yale, Syracuse and Pennsylvania State University before becoming a founding faculty member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, in 2001. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo. Smolin is one of the originators of loop quantum gravity, an approach that treats space as made of discrete units. He has also worked on cosmological natural selection and on the foundations of quantum mechanics. He writes for general readers as well as specialists. His books include The Life of the Cosmos, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, The Trouble with Physics, which criticizes the dominance of string theory, The Life of the Cosmos, Time Reborn and Einstein's Unfinished Revolution. His work argues that time and relations between events are central to physics, and it has shaped public debate about how fundamental physics should be pursued.