Lawrence Maxwell Krauss is a Canadian-American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is a Professor of Physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. He is an advocate of scientific skepticism, science education, and the science of morality.

Krauss received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics with first class honours at Carleton University, and was awarded a PhD in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After some time in the Harvard Society of Fellows, he became an assistant professor at Yale University and associate professor. He was named the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, professor of astronomy, and was chairman of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University for twelve years. In 2006, Krauss led the initiative for the no confidence vote against Case Western Reserve University’s president Edward M. Hundert and provost Anderson, which was approved on March 2, 2006 by the College of Arts and Sciences.

In August 2008 he joined the faculty at Arizona State University as Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and director of a university initiative, the Origins Project. In 2009 he helped inaugurate this initiative with the Origins Symposium, in which eighty scientists participated and three thousand people attended. He attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium in November 2006 and again in October 2008. He also served on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign science policy committee. In 2008 he was named co-president of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In 2010 he was elected to the board of directors of the Federation of American Scientists, and in June 2011 it was announced that he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.

Krauss also is a critic of string theory, which he discusses in his 2005 book, Hiding in the Mirror. Another book released in March 2011 was entitled, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science, and a new book released in January 2012, is entitled, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, with an afterword by Richard Dawkins. This became a New York Times Bestseller within a week of its release, and is being translated into 19 languages. Working mostly in theoretical (as opposed to experimental) physics, Krauss has published research on a great variety of topics within that field. His primary contribution is to cosmology, as he was one of the first physicists to suggest that most of the mass and energy of the universe resides in empty space, an idea now widely known as dark energy.

Krauss is one of the few living physicists referred to by Scientific American as a “public intellectual”, and he is the only physicist to have received awards from all three major U.S. physics societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics. In 2012 he was awarded the National Science Board’s Public Service Medal for his contributions to public education in science and engineering in the US.

During December 2011, Krauss was named as a non-voting honorary board member for the Center for Inquiry. He has received the following awards: the Gravity Research Foundation First prize award, the Presidential Investigator Award, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology, the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize, the Andrew Gemant Award, the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, the Oersted Medal, the American Physical Society Joseph P. Burton Forum Award, the Center for Inquiry World Congress Science in the Public Interest Award, the Helen Sawyer Hogg Prize of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Astronomical Society of Canada, the Physics World Book of the Year, and the National Science Board Public Service Award and Medal.