Michio Kaku (edit name/settings)

Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist who co-founded string field theory, and a futurist. He is a popularizer of science, host of two radio programs and a best-selling author.

Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. Growing up in the 1960's, Kaku attended Cubberly High School in Palo Alto, California where he was first board player on the chess team. At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, N.M., he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a B.S. degree in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and held a lectureship at Princeton University in 1973.

Kaku is currently the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He also holds a joint appointment at City College of New York, where he has lectured for more than 30 years. Presently, he is engaged in defining the "Theory of Everything", which seeks to unify the four fundamental forces of the universe: the strong force, the weak force, gravity and electromagnetism.

He has published extensively in string theory since 1969. In 1974, along with Prof. K. Kikkawa, he wrote the first paper on string field theory, now a major branch of theoretical physics. He is also author of the popular science books: Visions, Hyperspace, Einstein's Cosmos, and Parallel Worlds, and co-authored Beyond Einstein with Jennifer Thompson.