Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku was born in San Jose, California, in 1947. Both of his parents were second-generation Japanese-Americans and were interned in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center during World War II, where they met. Kaku’s interest in physics began at an early age, inspired by Albert Einstein’s unfinished unified field theory. In high school, he gained recognition by building a 2.3 MeV “atom smasher” in his parents’ garage from scrap materials, a project that attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who became his mentor. Kaku subsequently received the Hertz Engineering Scholarship due to this achievement.

Kaku pursued higher education at Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude in 1968, as the top student in his physics class. He then earned his PhD from the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and held a lectureship at Princeton University in 1972. During the Vietnam War, in 1968, Kaku joined the United States Army for two years, completing basic and advanced infantry training, though he was not deployed to Vietnam. His academic career advanced as he joined the City College of New York’s physics department, becoming an Assistant Professor in 1973, achieving tenure in 1976, and becoming a Professor in 1984. Since 2024, he has held the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York.

Over the decades, Kaku has contributed significantly to theoretical physics, co-authoring the first papers describing string theory in a field form with Keiji Kikkawa in 1974. His early research, between 1970 and 2000, focused on topics including superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. Beyond his academic contributions, Kaku has become a leading popularizer of science, authoring several New York Times best-selling books such like “Physics of the Impossible” (2008), “Physics of the Future” (2011), “The Future of the Mind” (2014), and “The God Equation” (2021). He has hosted numerous television specials for major networks including the BBC, Discovery Channel, History Channel, and Science Channel, and hosts the weekly radio programs “Exploration” and “Science Fantastic,”. His efforts to bridge science and science fiction were recognized with the Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.