Michio Kaku is an American physicist and futurologist of Japanese descent. He received the greatest fame as a popularizer of science and the creator of popular science bestsellers. It is also worth noting that he appeared in a number of BBC and Discovery Channel documentary projects devoted to time and space, parallel worlds, the birth of the Universe, the future of mankind, etc.
Family, childhood and university enrollment
Michio Kaku was born in 1947 in the state of California (USA) in a family of Japanese immigrants. It is known that grandfather Michio came to the States to participate in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake that occurred in San Francisco in 1906.
The father of the future physicist was born directly in California. However, he received education in the Land of the Rising Sun, and therefore did not speak English well. According to reports, he met his wife (and, accordingly, mother Michio Kaku) during the Second World War in a specialized internment camp for the Japanese "Tool Lake".
Michio studied at Kibberley High School, located in the town of Palo Alto. And already here he began to show remarkable intellectual abilities. In particular, he played chess well and was the captain of the school team for this sport. It is also known that in his youth Michio was able to build a 2.3 million electron-volt particle accelerator. In his own words, he needed the accelerator in order to generate a powerful beam of gamma rays, and then use them to obtain antimatter.
Michio demonstrated his home-made designs at the National Science Fair. There he was noticed by the famous physicist, one of the fathers of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller. Teller helped Michio receive a scholarship and enroll at Harvard University. Moreover, in the future he became the supervisor of Michio.
Further scientific career
In 1968, Kaku became the holder of a bachelor's degree at Harvard, after which he collaborated with the Berkeley radiation laboratory.
In 1972, Michio Kaku was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (despite the name, at present this degree has no practical relation to philosophy, in the USA it can be obtained by representatives of almost any scientific field).
In 1973, he was invited to give lectures at Princeton University.
In 1974, Kaku published the first major scientific work in his biography on string field theory. In a sense, this work was a continuation of the scientific search for the great Albert Einstein, who pondered a lot on the so-called "theory of everything" - a theory that could unite all fundamental interactions.
In the 1980s, Michio became a professor of theoretical physics and became a professor at New York City College. It is interesting that to this day he works in this institution of higher education.
Michio Kaku as a popularizer of science
In 1987, co-authored with Jennifer Thompson, Kaku published his first popular science book Beyond Einstein's Scientific Thought. Then a series of books followed, which became bestsellers due to the non-trivial content and simplicity of the syllable. More specifically, we are talking about books such as Hyperspace (1994), Einstein's Space (2004), Physics of the Impossible (2008), Physics of the Future (2011), The Future of Mind (2014), and The Future of humanity "(2018).
And in the 21st century, Kaku began to appear quite often in documentaries on popular science topics. So, for example, in 2006 he played the role of presenter and storyteller in a four-part documentary film from the BBC corporation Vremya. Each of the four series here was devoted to one or another aspect of the mysterious nature of time.
And, let's say, in January 2007, Kaku took part in a television project from Discovery Channel "2057", which suggested how human life could change over the next fifty years.
In December 2009, Michio Kaku began conducting a weekly documentary series for the Science Channel entitled "Scientific Non-Fiction: The Physics of the Impossible." This series was based on one of his best-selling books and consisted of twelve episodes of 30 minutes each. In each episode, the audience was introduced to the scientific basis of such things as time travel, interstellar ships, parallel worlds, teleportation, invisibility, superpowers, "flying saucers", etc. Among other things, this series was attractive because it was possible to hear comments from leading world scientists on a particular topic.
In 2010, Michio Kaku (along with Andrei Linda, Lee Smolin, Roger Penrose, Neil Turok and other reputable cosmologists and physicists) took part in the BBC documentary “What happened before the Big Bang”, where he shared his vision of how the Universe came about.
It should also be added that for many years, Michio Kaku has been conducting his weekly scientific radio program. It is recorded on Saturdays, lasts three hours and is broadcast on about a hundred commercial radio stations in the United States. But, of course, you can listen to it online from anywhere in the world. Within the framework of this radio program, calls are also received from listeners, which makes it possible for everyone to communicate with Professor Kaku.
