| Awards/Achievements | - 1967: Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada
- 1992: Richtmyer Memorial Award
- 1994: Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science
- 1996: Karl Schwarzschild Medal, Lilienfeld Prize
- 2009: Albert Einstein Medal
- 2010: Niels Bohr International Gold Medal
- 2016: Gruber Prize in Cosmology, Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, The Shaw Prize, Harvey Prize, Kavli Prize
- 2017: Princess of Asturias Award for Technical & Scientific Research, Harvey Prize in Science and Technology, Nobel Prize in Physics
- 2004: California Scientist of the Year
- 2018: Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing
|
|---|
| Lesser Known Facts | - Does Kip Thorne smoke?: Not Known
- Does Kip Thorne drink alcohol?: Not Known
- Two of his four siblings ended up being professors due to the academic environment at home.
- Expert on the astrophysical implications of General Theory of Relativity
- Worked closely with Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan
- Collaborated with Christopher Nolan on the movie Interstellar
- Co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017 for contributions to gravitational wave observations and LIGO
- Learned Russian to understand Soviet physics literature and collaborated regularly with Russian scientists on astrophysics and gravitational waves research
- Authored popular science books including Black Holes and Time Warps
- Full professor of theoretical physics at Caltech in 1970, one of the youngest in Caltech history at age 30
- Co-founded the SXS Project (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) with Saul Teukolsky in the early 2000s
|
|---|
| Current Position | Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus at California Institute of Technology |
|---|
| Career Highlights | - Associate Professor at Caltech, 1967
- William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, 1981
- Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, 1991
- Co-authored the general relativity textbook Gravitation with John A. Wheeler and Charles Misner
- Provided theoretical support for LIGO detector development
- Created the SXS Project (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) with Saul Teukolsky of Cornell University in the early 2000s to simulate gravitational wave sources
- Scientific advisor for the 2014 film Interstellar
- Scientific consultant for the 2020 film Tenet
|
|---|
