Professor Witten is a leading light of superstring theory and the only physicist to have won the vaunted Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honor. Known for advancing a number of novel approaches in mathematics and physics, Witten opened up new vistas in 1995 when he unified five seemingly competing superstring theories into M-theory, which seeks to unify Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.

What are scientists looking for when searching for alien life? A lot, it turns out: the search for extraterrestrials requires the help from astronomers, planetary scientists, chemists, computer scientists, and geneticists, just to name a few. But are we barking up the wrong carbon-based tree?

What attributes set our species apart? Taming fire? Expressing artistically? Solving problems creatively? Recent discoveries that have already upended humankind’s origin story by expanding our family tree, are challenging long-held …

Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate and Templeton Prize winner, has played a leading role in developing the most refined quantum mechanical understanding of the microworld and in proposing solutions to a …

What happens when a black hole a billion times more massive than our sun powers a star-like object? It’s a quasar of a question. These massive and extremely remote celestial …

James Peebles, one of the world’s greatest cosmologists, has profoundly influenced our understanding of dark matter, dark energy, and the big bang, contributions that earned him the 2019 Nobel Prize …