Avi Loeb

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of the New York Times,Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L’Express and more). He received a PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb has written 9 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial and Interstellar, as well as over a thousand scientific papers (with h-index of 123 and i10-index of 574) on a wide range of topics.

Loeb is the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (2007-present) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and also serves as the Head of the Galileo Project (2021-present).

He served as Harvard’s Department of Astronomy Chair from 2011 to 2020 and founded Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative from 2016 to 2021. He’s a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. Loeb was on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and chaired the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies from 2018 to 2021. He currently chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative and serves as the Science Theory Director for the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. TIME magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people in space in 2012, and he was recognized as one of the 14 most inspiring Israelis of the last decade in 2020. Explore Loeb’s essays on innovation.