How much is Lawrence Krauss worth?
| Net Worth: | $2.5 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Physicist |
| Date of Birth: | May 27, 1954 |
| Country: | American-born Canadian |
| Height: | Unknown |
About Lawrence Krauss
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Maxwell Krauss was born in Canada on May 27, 1954, and his estimated net worth is $2.5 million. He has formerly held academic positions at Case Western Reserve University, Yale University, and Arizona State University.
Birthdate: May 27, 1954
Birthplace: New York City (but moved to Toronto shortly after his birth and grew up there)
Education & Academic History
- 1977 – Undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics at Ottawa’s Carleton University, having earned first class honours.
- 1982 – Physics Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 1985 to 1993 – Assistant and then associate professorship at Yale
- 1993 to 2005 – He went on to serve as the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and Chairman of the department of Physics at Case Western Reserve University
- 2008 to present (2011, at least) – Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department, and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University
Science-Related Background
Lawrence Krauss is a cosmologist, which means he researches the universe’s beginnings. He even currently serves as the director of Arizona State University’s Origins Project, a transdisciplinary initiative that “transdisciplinary initiative that nurtures research, energizes teaching, and builds partnerships, offering new possibilities for exploring the most fundamental of questions who we are and where we came from.” In this role, along with his scientific publications, he works to educate the general public about the beginnings, evolution, and history of the cosmos.
Scientific Controversies and Krauss
Lawrence Krauss is not one to avoid a debate, and trying to understand the universe’s beginnings can undoubtedly lead to some debates.
Though he is an atheist, Krauss frequently adopts a devil’s advocate stance, which occasionally puts him in amicable disagreement with some of the more well-known atheists, such as Richard Dawkins (who once claimed that Krauss asked him a “I’m an atheist, but…” question, which is much more difficult to answer than the outright pro-religion questions). It appears that Krauss has no particular interest in altering people’s fundamental beliefs; rather, he wants to teach everyone, whether they are religious or not, what science has to say about the world and its past. Krauss has grown considerably more outspoken in recent years, especially since the release of his book A Universe From Nothing, in opposition to religious and theist claims. In 2013, Krauss and Richard Dawkins co-starred in the documentary The Unbelievers.
Critic of String Theory: Krauss is one of the most well-known and esteemed opponents of string theory. He explores the history and appeal of using extra dimensions as a physical explanation in his 2005 book Hiding in the Mirror, and he questions if this is actually justified. In an interview with me on April 7, 2014, Krauss discussed his position in Hiding in the Mirror:
My point was that string theory is based on a lot of fascinating ideas. However, it has been the least successful great idea in science in the sense that it hasn’t yet made touch with observation in any way. We still don’t know if the ideas of string theory are right. They’re really well motivated; it’s not as if they aren’t well motivated. But it was strongly hyped. And I guess I was against the hype, not the theory. It’s not even a theory. It’s unfair to evolution to call string theory a theory. It’s not a theory. A theory is something that has been tested robustly by experiment and it’s unfair to evolution to call it a theory. I said that many years ago and Brian Greene used to get mad at me, but now he agrees with me. But I think the point is that it’s fascinating and we’re studying it, it just hasn’t had any great successes in terms of demonstrating that it can help us understand the universe. Maybe it will one day.
Science Writing
A lot of academic publications are written by physicists. In actuality, his website states that he has written “over 300 scientific publications.” Krauss also frequently composes editorials, essays, and articles for well-known journals. He is one of the most well-known authors who explains the history of the universe to lay audiences thanks to his many publications created for general readers.
Origins Project Foundation
The Origins Project Foundation, a nonprofit organization created to organize open panel debates on science, culture, and social issues, appointed Krauss as its president in January 2019. The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, a brand-new video podcast, debuted on June 21, 2019, with Krauss serving as the host. Conversations with Ricky Gervais, Noam Chomsky, and Jenny Boylan were featured in the first episodes. Lawrence Krauss’s net worth is projected to be $2.5 million as of 2023.
- The Fifth Essence (1991)
- Fear of Physics (1994)
- The Physics of Star Trek (1995)
- Beyond Star Trek (1997)
- Quintessence (2001)
- Atom (2002)
- Hiding in the Mirror (2005)
- Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science (2010)
- A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Jan. 2012)
Awards
- Gravity Research Foundation First prize award (1984)
- Presidential Investigator Award (1986)
- American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology (2000)
- Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize (2001)
- Andrew Gemant Award (2001)
- American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award (2002)
- Oersted Medal (2003)
- American Physical Society Joseph P. Burton Forum Award (2005)
- Center for Inquiry World Congress Science in the Public Interest Award (2009)
- Helen Sawyer Hogg Prize of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Astronomical Society of Canada (2009)
Krauss Quotes
“You’re here because you want to escape reality and that’s one of the things that science is good for, to take us out at least a bit beyond our petty worries and concerns of the day.”
“I want to try to … take you beyond this brief moment in cosmic history, to realize that all of this isn’t important, that the really important stuff is far grander. The next time you’re depressed, you can think about the fact that we’re really, in fact, completely insignificant…. You are much more insignificant than you thought.”
“Rare events happen all the time because the universe is big and old.”
“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode…. The stars died so that you could be here today.”
“The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.”
“All the hydrogen burns into helium in 10 million years…. All the helium burns to carbon in 1 million years…. Again, the star starts to collapse, because there’s no more fuel. But then it heats up and the carbon starts to burn … to form neon and nitrogen. And all of the carbon in the star burns in 100 thousand years…. And you get to oxygen. Oxygen … burns to silicon in 10 thousand years. It’s getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Less efficient. And then when all the oxygen burns to silicon, you’re in the last day of the star because, remarkably, it is so hot at that point that all of the silicon in the center of the star, many thousands of times the mass of the Earth, burns to form iron in one day…. Iron can’t burn to form anything. Iron is the most tightly-bound nucleus in nature. So once that’s happened, there’s no more fuel… When all the silicon has burned to iron, suddenly the star realizes there’s no place left to go and that interior of the star, which has been held up by the pressure of nuclear burning, collapses. That whole collapse happens in one second…. There’s a shock wave and that shock wave … spews out all of the atoms that were created during the life history of a star. The carbon, the nitrogen, the helium, the iron. And that’s vitally important, because every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded…. The atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than in your right hand, because 200 million stars have exploded to make up the atoms in your body.”
