Comprehensive information and links about Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1948, son of Richard Lightman, a movie theater owner, and Jeanne Garretson, a dancing teacher and volunteer Braille typist.

From an early age, he was entranced by both science and the arts and, while in high school, began independent science projects and writing poetry. He graduated from White Station High School in Memphis. Lightman received his AB degree in physics from Princeton University in 1970, , where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1974. 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 2005, Lightman received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Bowdoin College. He currently teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Adjunct Professor of Humanities.

In 1981, Lightman began publishing essays about science, the human side of science, and the "mind of science", beginning with , and other magazines. Since that time, Lightman's essays, short fiction, and reviews have also appeared in was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 PEN New England 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.

More than two dozen independent theatrical and musical productions have been based on , including a production at Chicago's National Pastime Theater in 2000, produced and directed by Patrizia Acerra and Dawn Arnold; a production at Paradise Theater in New York in 2001, produced and directed by Paul Stancato and Brian Rhinehart; a production at the Culture Project Theater in New York in 2003, directed by Rebecca Holderness; a production at the People's Branch Theater in Nashville in 2003, adapted by Brian Niece and David Alford, directed by David Alford; a musical production at the Martin Segal Theater of CUNY in New York in 2003, produced by Brian Schwartz with music and lyrics by Joshua Rosenblum and Joanne Lessner; a musical composition titled "In This World" by Paul Hoffman in 2000 and performed by the Silverwood Trio on a Centaur CD; and a musical composition titled "When Einstein Dreams" by Nando Michelin in 2003 and performed by the Nando Michelin Group on a Double Times Record CD. A major musical adaptation is now being planned for the Prince Theater in Philadelphia for the spring of 2006, directed by Marjorie Samov.

"The Uncertainty Principle," Technology Review, April 1996; also published under the title "Seasons""The World is Too Much with Me" in Living with the Genie, ed. Chris Deser, Alan Lightman, and Daniel Sarewitz"Red, White, and Bamboo," (Second Letter from Cambodia), The New York Times, Op-Ed Page, July 5, 2005