Kip Thorne

Born in Logan Utah in 1940, Kip Thorne received his B.S. degree from Caltech in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965. After two years of postdoctoral study, Thorne returned to Caltech as an Associate professor in 1967, was promoted to Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1970, became The William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor in 1981, and The Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1991. In June 2009, Thorne resigned his Feynman Professorship (becoming the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus) in order to ramp up a new career in writing, movies, and continued scientific research. His principal current writing project is a textbook on classical physics co-authored with Roger Blandford. His principal current movie project is Interstellar (directed by Christopher Nolan; screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; produced by Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas and Lynda Obst; release date November 7, 2014); Thorne is an executive producer and with Lynda Obst he coauthored the Treatment from which the movie grew. His principal current research is an exploration of the nonlinear dynamical behaviors of curved spacetime, using computer simulations and analytical calculations. He is a co-founder (with Weiss and Drever) of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project and he chaired the steering committee that led LIGO in its earliest years (1984--87). In the 1980s, 90s and 2000s he and his research group have provided theoretical support for LIGO, including identifying gravitational wave sources that LIGO should target, laying foundations for data analysis techniques by which their waves are being sought, designing the baffles to control scattered light in the LIGO beam tubes, and --- in collaboration with Vladimir Braginsky's (Moscow Russia) research group --- inventing quantum-nondemolition designs for advanced gravity-wave detectors. He has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Danforth Foundation Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow; and he has served on the International Committee on General Relativity and Gravitation, the Committee on US-USSR Cooperation in Physics, and the National Academy of Science's Space Science Board, which advised NASA and Congress on space science policy. In 1996--97 he organized and chaired the search for a new president of the California Institute of Technology, culminating in the selection, by the Caltech Board of Trustees, of the Nobelist-biologist David Baltimore.