Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall [207]
Topics like risk and uncertainty can be risky (and uncertain). Thanks to Noah Feldman, Joe Fragola, Victoria Gray, Joe Kroll, Curt McMullen, Jamie Robins, Jeannie Suk, attendees at the Harvard Law School Colloquium, and particularly Jonathan Wiener for sharing their expertise, and also to earlier conversations with Cass Sunstein. Creativity can be another slippery topic and I’m grateful to Karen Barbarossa, Paul Graham, Lia Halloran, Gary Lauder, Liz Lerman, Peter Mays, and Elizabeth Streb for sharing their insights. Special thanks also to Scott Derrickson for his conversations that were key to the first chapter, and for correcting me when his memory was better than mine. Thanks to the organizers of 2010 Techonomy for inviting me to join the opening panel—preparing for it contributed to the book’s conclusions. Thanks, too, to the others whose conversations were mentioned in the text. Thanks also to Alfred Assin, Rodney Brooks, David Fenton, Kevin McGarvey, Sesha Pratap, Dana Randall, Andy Singleton, and Kevin Slavin for their generous feedback and thoughts, and to A.M. Homes and Rick Kot for advice and encouragement.
I am grateful to several others for encouraging me early on in the somewhat challenging enterprise I’d set out to pursue. Thanks to John Brockman and Ecco’s Dan Halpern for getting this book off the ground, and to Matt Weiland, and his assistant, Shanna Milkey, for helping connect the pieces. Thanks, too, to the others at Ecco who helped make this book a reality, and to Andrew Wylie for shepherding the final stages. I am also pleased to have worked with the great illustrating team of Tommy McCall, Ana Becker, and Richert Schnorr, who conveyed complicated ideas with clear and precise pictures.
Finally, thanks to my research collaborators and fellow physicists for all they’ve taught me. Thanks to my family for encouraging my love of rationality. Thanks to my friends for their patience and support. And thanks to those—mentioned or not—who have helped shape my ideas along the way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is Frank J. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science. Her work has made her among the most cited and influential theoretical physicists today, and has been featured in Discover, the Economist, Newsweek, Scientific American, and many top-ranked scientific journals. She has been one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” and Rolling Stone’s “RS100: Agents of Change,” and her first book, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions, was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2005. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. When not solving the problems of the universe, Randall can be found rock climbing, skiing, or contributing to art-science connections. Her libretto for Hypermusic Prologue premiered at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 2009.
www.harpercollins.com/lisarandall
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PRAISE
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Knocking on Heaven’s Door
“Lisa Randall has written Knocking on Heaven’s Door in the same witty, informal style with which she explains physics in person, making complex ideas fascinating and easy to understand. Her book presents the latest physics developments with excursions into culture and public policy, explaining science in ways that just might make you think differently—and encourage you to make smarter decisions about the world.”
—PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
“I didn’t think it was possible to write a complex, detailed look at the world of physics that the non-scientist could understand,