Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and taught at the California Institute of Technology. He is a popular international speaker and the author of numerous academic papers in physics and eight popular science books, including four best sellers.

Stephen W. Hawking is one of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists. His dramatic breakthroughs into the origin of the universe and the properties of black holes are among the most revolutionary insights into the nature of the cosmos since the work of Albert Einstein.

George Ellis is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Capetown and investigates cosmology, the nature of time, and the emergence of complexity. He is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time.

Lucy Hawking is a journalist, and the author of several novels. With her father, the physicist Stephen Hawking, she has written George’s Secret Key to the Universe, a children’s adventure featuring the mysteries of physics, science and the Universe.

Sir Roger Penrose has made seminal contributions to our understanding of space and time. In describing the initial conditions of the universe, he provided the foundation for studying the origins of the arrow of time.

After graduation from Oxford in 1964, Michael York joined the National Theatre company, making his film debut in The Taming of the Shrew. His more than 60 other screen credits include Romeo and Juliet, Cabaret, Jesus of Nazareth, The Three Musketeers, Logan’s Run, Murder on the Orient Express, Conduct Unbecoming, The Omega Code and all three Austin Powers movies.

Cumrun Vafa is the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. He received his BS in Math and Physics from MIT in 1981 and his PhD in …

Neil Turok is Director and Niels Bohr Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. Previously he was Professor of Physics at Princeton and Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge. He is also Founder and Chair of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

Andrew Strominger is the Gwill E. York Professor of Physics at Harvard University and a founding member of the Black Hole Initiative. He is a renowned theoretical physicist who has …

Samir Mathur is a physicist who has spent over two decades working on the black hole information paradox. He has proposed that this paradox is resolved because the structure of black holes is radically altered in string theory: Instead of having all their mass at their center, black holes are “fuzzballs” with no regular horizon or singularity.