John Gribbin's The Universe: A Biography explores the story of our cosmos, from the mystery of its origins to how scientists think it might end. How did the universe grow from a tiny fireball to its present size? Where did life on earth come from? How do planets form? How will the universe end? And how do we even know all this anyway? John Gribbin, one of Britain's most popular writers about science and the people who made it happen, has decided to create a biography of the greatest subject of all: the universe itself, from beginning to end (and beyond). From the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, the formation of stars and galaxies and the first stirrings of life, to the latest thinking on dark matter and a theory of everything - and beyond to the future possibility of a Big Crunch or a Big Rip - this is the life history of the entire world around us. John Gribbin is one of today's greatest writers of popular science and the author of bestselling books, including In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Stardust, Science: A History and In Search of the Multiverse. Gribbin trained as an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and is currently Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.
Author
John R. Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. The topical range of his prolific writings includes quantum physics, biographies of famous scientists, human evolution, the origins of the universe, climate change and global warming. His also writes science fiction. John Gribbin graduated with his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. Gribbin then earned his master of science (M.Sc.) degree in astronomy in 1967, also from the Univ. of Sussex, and he earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (1971). In 1968, Gribbin worked as one of Fred Hoyle's research students at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, and wrote a number of stories for New Scientist about the Institute's research and what were eventually discovered to be pulsars. In 1974, Gribbin published, along with Stephen Plagemann, a book titled The Jupiter Effect, that predicted that the alignment of the planets in quadrant on one side of the Sun on March 10, 1982 would cause gravitational effects that would trigger earthquakes in the San Andreas fault, possibly wiping out Los Angeles and its suburbs. Gribbin repudiated The Jupiter Effect in the July 17, 1980, issue of New Scientist magazine in which he stated that he had been "too clever by half". In 1984, Gribbin published In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, the book that he is best known for, which continues to sell well 28 years after publication. It has been described as among the best of the first wave of physics popularisations preceding Stephen Hawking's multi-million-selling A Brief History of Time. Gribbin's book has been cited as an example of how to revive an interest in the study of mathematics. In 2006, Gribbin took part in a BBC radio 4 broadcast as an "expert witness". Presenter Matthew Parris discussed with Professor Kathy Sykes and Gribbin whether Einstein "really was a 'crazy genius' ". At the 2009 World Conference of Science Journalists, the Association of British Science Writers presented Gribbin with their Lifetime Achievement award.
