Personal
Data |
Born June
1, 1940, Logan, Utah, USA, son of Professors D. Wynne Thorne and Alison C.
Thorne
Married Linda Jean Peterson, September 12, 1960; divorced July 1977
Children Kares Anne, Bret Carter
Married Carolee Joyce Winstein, July 7, 1984
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Present Position
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The
Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus |
California
Institute of Technology |
2009 - present
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Previous
Positions |
Postdoctoral Fellow in Physics |
Princeton University |
1965 - 1966 |
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Research Fellow in Physics |
California Institute of Technology |
1966 - 1967 |
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Associate Professor of Theoretical
Physics |
California Institute of Technology |
1967 - 1970 |
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Professor of Theoretical Physics |
California Institute of Technology |
1970 - 1991 |
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The William R. Kenan, Jr.,
Professor |
California Institute of Technology |
1981 - 1991 |
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The Feynman Professor of Theoretical
Physics |
California Institute of Technology |
1991 - 2009 |
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Adjunct Professor of Physics |
University of Utah |
1971 - 1998 |
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Andrew D. White Professor
at Large |
Cornell University |
1986 - 1992
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Research
Interests |
Theoretical
physics, gravitational physics,
astrophysics
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Education
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B.S. (Physics)
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California
Institute of Technology |
1962
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A.M. (Physics)
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Princeton University
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1963
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Ph.D. (Physics)
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Princeton University
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1965
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precollege
education: Logan, Utah
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Elected Memberships
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- National Academy of Sciences, 1973
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow, 1972
- Russian Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member, 1999
- American Philosophical Society, 1999
- American Physical Society, Fellow, ca. 1971
- American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow,
1976
- International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, Fellow, 2016
- Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Foreign Member, 2016
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Member
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- International Committee on General Relativity and Gravitation,
1971 - 1980, 1992 -
- Committee on US-USSR Cooperation in Physics, 1978 - 1979
- Space Science Board, 1980 - 1983
- Advisory Board, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara,1978
- 1980
- Fachbeirat (Advisory Board), Albert Einstein Institute, Germany,
1997 - 2005
- Chairman of Steering Committee, Caltech/MIT Laser Interferometer
Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO Project), 1984 - 1987
- Society for Amateur Scientists, Advisory Board, 1994 -
- American Astronomical Society
- Governing Committee, Division of High Energy Astrophysics,
American Astronomical Society, 1970 - 1972
- Chair, Faculty Search Committee for the President of Caltech,
1996 - 1997
- Chair, Topical Group in Gravity, American Physical Society,
1997 - 1998
- International Astronomical Union
- Editorial Advisory Board of Astrophysical Letters, 1968 - 1974
- Board of Editors of Journal of Mathematical Physics, 1969 - 1971
- Board of Correspondents of Comments on Astrophysics and Space
Physics, 1969 - 1970
- Tau Beta Pi
- Sigma Xi
- Board of Trustees, The Stephen Hawking Foundation, 1915 - 2022
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Honorary
Degrees |
- Honorary Doctor of Science, Illinois College, 1979
- Doctoris Honoris Causa, Moscow University, 1981
- Honorary Doctor of Science, Utah State University, 2000
- Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Glasgow, 2001
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Claremont Graduate University, 2002
- Honorary Doctor
of Science, University of Chicago, 2008
- Doctors Honoris Causa, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), 2017
- Doctor of Science Honoris Causa, ETH, Zurich, 2017
- Honorary Professor of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2017
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Science Awards
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- Richtmeyer Memorial Award, American Association of Physics Teachers, 1992
- Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize, American Physical Society, 1996
- Karl Schwarzschild Medal, Astronomische Gesellschaft (Astronomical
Society of Germany), 1996
- Robinson Prize in Cosmology, University of Newcastle, 2002
- California Scientist of the Year, 2004
- Common Wealth Award in Science, 2005
- Albert Einstein Medal, Albert Einstein Society, Berne, Switzerland,
2009
- UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medal, 2010
- Howard Vollum Award for Science and Technology, Reed College, 2013
- Included in Time Magazine's 2016 list of the 100 most influential people in the world
- Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, 2016
shared with Rainer Weiss, Ronald Drever, and 1012 other contributors to the discovery of gravitational waves
- Gruber Cosmology Prize, 2016
shared with Rainer Weiss, Ronald Drever, and the LIGO team
- Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, 2016
shared with Rainer Weiss and Ronald Drever
- Shaw Prize in Astronomy, 2016
shared with Rainer Weiss and Ronald Drever
- Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in the Physical Sciences, 2016
shared with Barry Barish, Ronald Drever and Rainer Weiss
- Tomalla Prize for Extraordinary Contributions to General Relativity and Gravity, 2016
- Georges Lemaître International Prize, 2016
- Genius Award, Liberty Science Center, Newark, 2016
shared with Frank Gehry, Jack Horner and Ellen Langer
- Oskar Klein Medal and Memorial Lecture, Stockholm University and Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2016
- James Joyce Award for Human Endeavor, The Literary and Historical Society of The College Debating Union, University College, Dublin, 2016
- Harvey Prize for Breakthroughs in Science and Technology, from the Technion, Haifa, Israel, 2016
shared with Rainer Weiss and Ronald Drever
- Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize for an outstanding contribution to Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, 2017
shared with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish
- Princess of Asturias Award for Technical & Scientific Research, 2017
shared with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish
- Nobel Prize in Physics, 2017
shared with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish
- Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award, 2017
shared with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish
- James Madison Medal for a Distinguished Alumnus of the Princeton University Graduate School, 2020
- Grand Gold Medal of the Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2021
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Film
Awards |
- Kip Thorne Gravity Award for the Best Depiction of a Scientific
Principle in a Feature film, RAW Science Film Festival, for gravity in Interstellar, 2014
- Space Pioneer Award for Mass Media, National Space Society, for translating black hole and wormhole physics into accurate visual effects for Interstellar, 2015
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Science Writing
Awards |
- American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in Physics
and Astronomy, 1969 and 1994
- Priroda (USSR) Readers' Choice Award for 1989 and 1990
- Phi Beta Kappa Science Writing Award, 1994
- Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science, 2018
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Teaching & Mentoring Awards |
- Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology (undergraduates): 24th Annual Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1999-2000
- California Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council: Mentoring Award, 2004
- American Association of Physics Teachers: J.D. Jackson Excellence in Graduate Education Award, 2012
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Scholarships,
Fellowships,
Temporary Appointments |
- General Motors National Scholar, 1958 - 1962
- Honorary National Merit Scholar, 1958 - 1962
- Woodrow Wilson Fellow, 1962 - 1963
- Danforth Foundation Fellow, 1962 - 1965
- National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, 1964 - 1965
- National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, 1965 - 1966
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow in Physics, 1966
- 1968
- Fulbright Lecturer in France, 1966
- John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, June 1967 - January 1968
- Visiting Associate Professor of Physics, University of Chicago,
January - June 1968
- Visiting Professor, Moscow University (USSR), August and September
1969, September 1975, March 1978,
September 1981, December 1982, April 1986, August and September
1988, June 1990, April 1998
- Visiting Lecturer for the Academy of Sciences of the USSR,
September 1971 and September 1973
- Visiting Senior Research Associate, Cornell University, January
- June 1977
- Member, Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB, 1981 - 1982
and Spring 1993
- Visiting Scientist, Max-Planck-Institut für GravitationsPhysik
(Germany), April - June 1998
- Lorentz Professor, University of Leiden (Netherlands), June and
September-October 2009
- Visiting Scientist, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, Stellenbosch, South Africa, November 2010
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Lectureship
Awards and Endowed Lectureships |
- John Danz Lecturer, University of Washington, 1981
- Silliman Lecturer, Yale University, 1984
- Carl Herzfeld Lecturer, Catholic University, 1985
- Hans Bethe Lecturer, Cornell University, 1986
- Sigma Xi Centennial Lecturer, 1986
- Bart Bok Memorial Lecturer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
1987
- Newton Tercentenary Lecturer, University of Alberta, 1987
- Patton L. Seifert Memorial Lecturer, Montana State University,
1989
- Gardiner Memorial Lecturer, New Mexico State University, 1989
- Yunker Memorial Lecturer, Oregon State University, 1989
- Hauser Memorial Lecturer, California Polytechnic University,
1990
- Leon Pape Memorial Lecturer, California State University at
Los Angeles, 1994
- O.C. Tanner Lecturer in the Humanities, Utah State University,
1994
- Alphaeus W. Smith Lecturer, Ohio State University, 1995, 2015
- P.A.M. Dirac Memorial Lecturer, University of Cambridge, 1995
- Max Goodrich Memorial Lecturer, Louisiana State University,
1996
- First Leibniz-Kolleg Lecturer, Potsdam, Germany, 1998
- Konopinski Memorial Lecturer, Indiana University, 1998
- J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Lecturer, University of California
at Berkeley, 1999
- George Darwin Lecturer, Royal Astronomical Society, 2000
- Arthur Holly Compton Memorial Lecturer, Washington University,
2001
- Inaugural Herzberg Memorial Lecturer, Canadian Association of
Physicists, 2001
- Elston Memorial Lecture, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, 2002
- Kibbe Lecture, Bowdoin College, 2002
- Resnick Lecture, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), 2005
- Presidential Lecture, University of Tulsa, 2007
- Ford Lecture, University of Michigan, 2007
- Sacker Lecture, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics,
2008
- Chesley Lecture, Carleton College, 2008
- 125 Anniversary Lecture, Cardiff University, 2009
- Brinson Lecture, University of Chicago, 2009
- Scott Lectures, Cavendish Laboratories, University of Cambridge, 2010
- Dennis Sciama Memorial Lectures, University of Oxford and International School for Advanced Studies (Trieste), May 2011
- Wolfgang Pauli Lectures, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, May 2011
- S. Chandrasekhar Memorial Lecture, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India, December 2011
- S.N. Bose Jubilee Lecture, S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Science, Kolkata, India, 2011
- Mauer Distinguished Lecture, University of Arkansas, 2012
- David L. Anderson Lecturer, Oberlin College, 2015
- Einstein Lecture Dahlem, Freie Universität, Berlin 2015
- The Smith Lecture, Ohio State University, 2015
- Yervant Terzian Memorial Lecture, Cornell University, 2016
- Carl M. Franklin Lecture on Science and Society, University of Southern California, 2017
- The Roberts Lecture, Colorado College, 2017
- George Gamow Memorial Lecture, University of Colorado, 2017
- Chamblin Lecture, University of Cambridge, 2017
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Summer-School
Lectureships |
- Enrico Fermi School of Physics (Varenna, Italy), 1965 and 1968
- Ecole d'Été de Physique Theorique (Les Houches,
France), 1966, 1972, and 1982
- University of Toronto, 1969
- University of New York at Stony Brook, 1969
- Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, England, 1973
- Ettore Majorana School of Physics (Erice, Italy), 1975
- Battelle Workshop on Sources of Gravitational Radiation (Seattle),
1978
- NATO Advanced Study Institute on Quantum Optics, Experimental
Gravitation, and Measurement Theory (Baad Windsheim, Germany),
1981
- NATO Advanced Study Institute on Gravitational Radiation (Les
Houches, France), 1982
- Winter School on Nonlinear Phenomena (ELAF-84, Santiago, Chile),
1984
- NATO Advanced Study Institute on Gravitation in Astrophysics
(Cargese, Corsica), 1986
- SLAC Summer Institute on Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and
Cosmology (Stanford, California), 1994
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For the list of Ph.D.'s
awarded by Caltech with Kip Thorne as the Thesis Advisor, please click
here |
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Questions or comments? Please contact joann[at]caltech.edu
Last modified on 10-18-17 |
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