Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of the New York Times,Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L'Express and more).
He received a PhD in Physics from
the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986),
led the first international project supported by
the Strategic
Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a
long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton
(1988-1993). Loeb has written 8 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial (HarperCollins, 2022) and Interstellar (HarperCollins, 2023) and nearly a thousand papers (with
h-index
of 127 and i10-index of 592) on a wide range of topics, including
black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and
the future of the Universe.
Loeb is the Director of
the Institute for Theory and Computation (2007-present)
within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
, and also serves as the Head of
the Galileo Project (2021-present).
He had been the
longest serving Chair of Harvard's
Department of Astronomy (2011-2020) and the Founding Director of
Harvard's Black
Hole Initiative (2016-2021).
He is
an elected fellow of
the American
Academy of Arts & Sciences,
the American
Physical Society, and
the International Academy of
Astronautics. Loeb is a former member of the
President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the White House, a former chair of
the Board
on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies (2018-2021) and
a current member of the Advisory Board for "Einstein: Visualize
the Impossible" of the Hebrew University.
He chaired the Advisory Committee for
the Breakthrough
Starshot Initiative (2015-2024) and served as the Science Theory Director
for
all Initiatives
of the Breakthrough Prize
Foundation. In
2012, TIME
magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in
space and in 2020
Loeb was
selected among the 14 most inspiring Israelis of the last
decade.
In 2024, Loeb was ranked number 3 in publication record and impact of research among all astronomers worldwide over the past 5 years by ScholarGPS.
Click here
for Loeb's commentaries.
Staff Assistant:
ITC Administrator:
BHI Administrator:
Theory Div. Admin.:
*Extraterrestrial: 28 editions in 25 languages worldwide (2021).
*Extraterrestrial summary, HMH (2021).
IN THE NEWS:
*"Did an Interstellar Gardener Seed Earth with erobic Bacteria?" (May 2, 2024).
*"Smoke and Mirrors Versus Signatures of Extraterrestrial Life" (April 30, 2024).
*"Do Magnetic Monopoles Exist?" (April 30, 2024).
*"Fact-Based AI as a Tool for Education" (April 28, 2024).
*"On Negative Mass, Time Travel and Aliens" (April 27, 2024).
*"Our Biggest Existential Risk is Superficiality" (April 26, 2024).
*"Complexity Nurtures Intelligence" (April 24, 2024).
*"Shining Light on Cosmic Hydrogen" (April 22, 2024).
*"Our Cosmic Exodus" (April 21, 2024).
*"The Art of Being Right in Finding a Message in a Bottle" (April 19, 2024).
*"My Unreheased TED Talk" (April 17, 2024).
*"When Did Life Start in the Universe?" (April 15, 2024).
*"Our Interstellar Cradle Allows Us To Become Interstellar Gardeners" (April 13, 2024).
*"The Shadow of an Alien Civilization" (April 11, 2024).
*"There is No Eclipse of Solar Neutrinos" (April 9, 2024).
*"Our Rare Moment Under the Sun" (April 8, 2024).
*"Is Dark Energy Evolving?" (April 7, 2024).
*"Good News: The Recent Taiwan and New-Jersey Earthquakes Were Not Trigerred by Humans" (April 6, 2024).
*"Can Starship-like Rockets Escape Habitable Exoplanets?" (April 5, 2024).
*"A New Expedition in Search for the Wreckage of IM1" (April 4, 2024).
*"Many-Body Systems of Heavenly Objects or People" (April 3, 2024).
*"Is the Grass Greener on Exoplanets?" (April 2, 2024).
*"Identifying the Unidentified with the Rubin and Galileo Observatories" (March 31, 2024).
*"In Praise of Advances Away from the Mean" (March 29, 2024).
*"Collision of Suns Moving Close to the Speed of Light Around a Black Hole" (March 29, 2024).
*"Thank God for Fact Checking!" (March 28, 2024).
*"Reality Must Be Imagined, For It To Be Understood" (March 25, 2024).
*"Being Curious and Humble is Key For Learning" (March 24, 2024).
*"What Caps the Mass of the Most Massive Black Holes in the Universe?" (March 22, 2024).
*"Techno-Signatures Might Be the Most Accessible Bio-Signatures" (March 22, 2024).
*Why is Childlike Bullying More Prevalent Than Childlike Curiosity?" (March 20, 2024).
*Would You Like To Be Immortal?" (March 19, 2024).
*The Promise of the Spring Equinox" (March 18, 2024).
*Exceeding the Escape Speed is a Sign of Intelligence" (March 17, 2024).
*Exceeding the Escape Speed is a Sign of Intelligence" (March 17, 2024).
*For the Love of the Printed Word" (March 15, 2024).
*A Packed Session on Exciting Science" (March 14, 2024).
*A Meteor is a Truck According to The New York Times" (March 13, 2024).
*The Thrill is All About the Search" (March 10, 2024).
*Having a Chip on Your Shoulder" (March 9, 2024).
*Chemical Composition of Unfamiliar Origin from the Pacific Ocean Site of the IM1 Meteor" (March 8, 2024).
*Clearing Rilke's Mystic Fog Over Nature (March 6, 2024).
*Would Albert Einstein End Up in Academia in 2024? (March 5, 2024).
*Food For Thought For Gen Z, Fast and Processed (March 5, 2024).
*Politically-Incorrect Astronomy (March 4, 2024).
*What a Wonderful World! (March 3, 2024).
*Fireballs in the Desert, Brighter Thank Oppenheimer's Trinity (March 2, 2024).
*Looking at the Stars, but Living in the Gutter (February 29, 2024).
*Milky-Way Tourism (February 27, 2024).
*Staying Young at 62 Out of 13.8-Billion Years (February 26, 2024).
*The Moon Will Die on Earth in 7.6-Billion Years (February 24, 2024).
*Seeking the Second Interstellar Meteor (February 22, 2024).
*What Does Extraterrestrial Intelligence Look Like? (February 21, 2024).
*What Have We Done to Deserve a Cosmic Partner? (February 20, 2024).
*Embracing Nicolaus Copernicus in Torun (February 18, 2024).
*Lessons from the Munich Security Conference (February 16, 2024).
*Science and Politics (February 15, 2024).
*Science Without Borders (February 14, 2024).
*Searching for Space Trash (February 12, 2024).
*Can Technological Civilizations Move Stars? (February 11, 2024).
*We Are Not Alone (February 10, 2024).
*A Gift from the Sky (February 8, 2024).
*Let Us Focus on Being Intelligent (February 7, 2024).
*Losing Weight by Relocating (February 5, 2024).
*A Sunshade to Protect the Earth's Climate Would be Perforated by Micr\
ometeoroids (February 4, 2024).
*Will Brain Chip Implants Enable "Thought Police"? (February 2, 2024).
*Are We "Sentinelese" on Island Earth in the Ocean of
Interstellar Space? (February 1, 2024).
*It Does Not Depend on Context (January 31, 2024).
*Our Birth in the Local Bubble (January 29, 2024).
*Space Trash on Our Way to the Stars (January 27, 2024).
*Are Humans Fundamentally Different from AI? (January 26, 2024).
*The Ethics of Astrobiology (January 24, 2024).
*The Faculties of Arts and Sciences (January 23, 2024).
*Limited Supplies in Our Cosmic Future (January 22, 2024).
*Coincidences of Our Sun and Moon: Are We Exceptionally Lucky? (January 20, 2024).
*Doing Science for Its Own Sake (January 19, 2024).
*A Spacecraft to Probe the Universe (January 17, 2024).
*New Knowledge Does Not Usually Fall into Our Lap (January 15, 2024).
*Who Should Be Held Legally Viable to Unpredictable AI? (January 14, 2024).
*Political Agendas Are Dangerous to Academia (January 13, 2024).
*The World is Seriously Broken: Can We Still Fix It? (January 11, 2024).
*The Interstellar Real Estate Industry (January 10, 2024).
*The BeLaU Spherules from IM1's Site Are Not Coal Ash (January 9, 2024).
*Are Galaxies "Going Bananas" at Early Cosmic Times? (January 8, 2024).
*The Cosmic Race Between Stars and Black Holes (January 6, 2024).
*Are Aliens Made Mostly of Oxygen? (January 4, 2024).
*A New Vision for Harvard (January 2, 2024).
*The Benefits of Aging on Earth Versus Space (January 1, 2024).
*Celebrating the Ten-Year Anniversary of the First Identified Interstellar Meteor (December 31, 2023).
*Academic Bubbles Are More Dangeroud Tha Black Holes (December 29, 2023).
*From Farm to High Table (December 26, 2023).
*A Retreat from Harvard in the Holy Land (December 24, 2023).
*The Universal Benefits of Communication (December 21, 2023).
*Our Nearest Neighbors (December 19, 2023).
*Detecting the Undetectable (December 17, 2023).
*Intelligence Means Exponential Growth (December 16, 2023).
*A Menorah of Stars Over Our Head (December 14, 2023).
*All Habitable Worlds Come to an End (December 12, 2023).
*A Heartfelt Letter to Harvard's President, Claudine Gay (December 10, 2023).
*It Takes Two Black Holes to Tango (December 10, 2023).
*The Biggest Mouth in the Universe (December 8, 2023).
*New Physics or Misinformation? (December 5, 2023).
*We Are Probably Not The Top Gun Civilization (December 3, 2023).
*Look Up for Anomalies (December 1, 2023).
*On the Stage at CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation (November 28, 2023).
*Ashes to Ashes: Superficial Toxicity is the Enemy of Curiosity-Driven Innovation in Science (November 25, 2023).
*Even the Tiniest Frog Can Become an Astronaut by Jumping Out of the Surface of a Mile-Size Asteroid (November 22, 2023).
*Are UAPs Relics from an Earlier Technological Civilization on Earth? (November 20, 2023).
*The Rocket Effect on Earth (November 18, 2023).
*New Knowledge Must Be Learned, Not Preached (November 15, 2023).
*The Invisible Sky in Neutrinos (November 13, 2023).
*Keep Your Inspiration from the Stars! (November 12, 2023).
*Mystery of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (November 10, 2023).
*Love the Aliens! (November 8, 2023).
*The Sun is Charged! (November 5, 2023).
*Is a More Advanced Civilization an Oxymoron? (November 4, 2023).
*Interstellar Affairs Are Not the Pentagon's Day Job (November 1, 2023).
*Would You Favor Truth Over Beauty? (October 30, 2023).
*Extraterrestrial Ethics (October 27, 2023).
*Facts Are Irrelevant to Pro-Truth Pretenders (October 25, 2023).
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