Kip Thorne
He may have retired, but the physicist has recently become a Nobel laureate in physics
It seems like news of gravitational waves is never out of the headlines, especially with the recent discovery of a neutron star collision causing the gravitational wave detection GW170817. These discoveries never would have been possible without the work of Kip Thorne, and that’s exactly why he, along with Barry Barish and Rainer Weiss, won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics for their “decisive contributions to the LIGO [Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory] detector and the observation of gravitational waves”.
Born in Logan, Utah, United
States on the 1 June 1940, Thorne excelled rapidly through his education, picking up respected degrees, including his PhD, from a combination of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, and Princeton University in New Jersey. This education led him to have a long and illustrative career, and although he retired in 2009, he still remains Emeritus Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech.
His work in the fields of theoretical physics, gravitational physics and astrophysics have revolutionised astronomy and astrophysics. With the bulk of his career being at Caltech, Thorne is considered to be one of the world’s leading experts when it comes to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. This was emphasised by the fact he won the ‘Albert Einstein Medal’ in 2009, as this award commemorates any scientific work related to Albert Einstein.
After his retirement in 2009, Thorne decided to get involved in the glamour of Hollywood in the form of being a scientific consultant and executive producer for the
2014 box-office film Interstellar.
The blockbuster proved to be a massive hit, with a worldwide gross of over $675 million (over £500 million), and this was largely down to the film's concept of scifi meets reality. For this, Thorne worked closely with the director, Christopher Nolan, to ensure the film had an authentic scientific feel to it, particularly when it came to the science behind black holes and wormholes. In fact, in an interview with TIME, Thorne explained that he had to spend a significant amount of time persuading Nolan that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Additionally, Thorne also wrote the book The Science of Interstellar, which dissects the physics behind the futuristic film in impressive and fascinating detail.
Thorne’s latest headlines come from his phenomenal work with LIGO and their recent discoveries of gravitational waves from several black hole mergers. This evidence is essential for proving that Einstein’s one-hundred-year-old General Theory of Relativity is correct, hence leading to Thorne being one of the three 2017 Nobel laureates in physics. Thorne has also continued to outline the importance of this field in astronomy – in particular the future work to be done by the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), which is scheduled for launch in 2034.
It is because of all this work, that the theoretical physics has become a popular figure in astrophysics, refining and improving on our understanding of our complex and fascinating universe.
“Thorne’s latest headlines come from his phenomenal work with LIGO”