Rose-Hulman News

Rose-Hulman is proud to announce Dr. Michio Kaku, world-renowned theoretical physicist, futurist, popularizer of science, and best-selling author, as the 2011 Commencement speaker for Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's 133rd commencement on May 28.

Dr. Kaku's most recent book, Physics of the Future, currently on the New York Times bestsellers list, examines how science will shape human destiny and people's daily lives by the Year 2100.  He is a co-founder of string field theory and continues Einstein's search for a "Theory of Everything" seeking to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.

After Harvard, Dr. Kaku went on to earn a Ph.D. in 1972 from the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.  He now holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York.  He is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Other best-selling books by Dr. Kaku have been Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond (1999), Physics of the Impossible (2008), Parallel Worlds (2006), Einstein's Cosmos (2005), Beyond Einstein (1995) and Hyperspace (1995).

The physicist whose theoretical talents have helped contribute string field theory to our body of recent scientific knowledge devotes much of his time to popularizing the concepts of physics, and he says he's often asked why doesn't he spend less time proselytizing and more time doing science. In one of his many televised appearances, Kaku explained that the cancellation of the American super collider told him that physicists had better "sing for their supper."

When Kaku writes about the technologies of the future, he discusses the possibilities before the backdrop of the science-fiction stories he loved growing up, Star Trek, Star Wars, Flash Gordon, etc. For example, in his book Physics of the Impossible, he divides technologies we might consider impossible into 3 classes. Among the imminently possible technologies (he calls these "Class I") are everything from robots to anti-matter, including force fields, invisibility, "light sabers" and "ray guns" (but for the want of a power pack). His second category of physical possibilities could be thousands of years away, like parallel universes and time travel. In class III, technologies that defy the known laws of physics, Kaku includes only perpetual motion machines and precognition.