Chiara Marletto is a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, working at the foundations of physics. Her research spans quantum information theory, quantum biology, condensed-matter physics, and thermodynamics. Together with David Deutsch, she has developed constructor theory — a proposed reformulation of the laws of physics in terms of counterfactuals: what can and cannot be done, and why.
The framework has applications ranging from the origins of life to the nature of information and the possibility of quantum gravity. She is also a member of the New Frontiers Quantum Hub. Her 2021 trade book, The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals (Viking/Penguin), brings these ideas to a general audience.
Books
