Tony Rothman (born 1953) is an American theoretical physicist, academic and writer.

Early life

Tony is the son of physicist and science fiction writer

Milton A. Rothman Milton A. Rothman (November 30, 1919 – October 6, 2001) was a United States nuclear physicist and college professor. He was also an active science fiction fan and a co-founder of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. An occasional aut ...

and psychotherapist Doris W. Rothman. He holds a B.A. from

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

, (1975) and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin (1981), where he studied at the Center for Relativity. He continued on post-doctoral fellowships at Oxford, Moscow State University and the University of Cape Town.

Career

Rothman worked briefly as an editor at '' Scientific American'', then taught at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bryn Mawr College and from 2005 to 2013 at Princeton University. In January 2016 he joined the faculty of NYU Polytech, now known as the Tandon School of Engineering and retired from teaching there in 2019. Rothman's scientific research has been concerned mainly with general relativity and cosmology, for which he has made contributions to the study of the early universe, specifically cosmic nucleosynthesis, black holes, inflationary cosmology and gravitons. Rothman was the scientific editor for Andrei Sakharov's ''Memoirs'' and he has contributed to numerous magazines, including '' Scientific American,'' '' Discover,'' ''

American Scientist __NOTOC__ ''American Scientist'' (informally abbreviated ''AmSci'') is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. In the beginning of 2000s the headquarters was in New ...

'', '' The New Republic'' and '' History Today.'' He has played oboe at a professional level and commissioned a concerto from Alexander Raskatov.

Selected works

Tony Rothman's first book, written just after graduating college, was '' The World is Round'' (Ballantine, 1978), a science fiction novel about the evolution of society on a non-earthlike planet. His experiences in Russia resulted in publication of a collection of short stories entitled ''Censored Tales'' (1989). He has also published six books of popular science and science history. His collection ''A Physicist on

Madison Avenue Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stre ...

'' (1991) was nominated for the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

, while ''Doubt and Certainty'', with George Sudarshan, was chosen by the A-List as one of the 200 best books of 1998. He co-authored ''Sacred Mathematics: Japanese Temple Geometry'' with Fukagawa Hidetoshi. Published in 2008, this was the first history of sangaku in English, and won the Association of American Publisher's 2008 PROSE award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in mathematics. His play ''The Magician and the Fool'', about Pushkin and Galois, won the 1981 Oxford Experimental Theatre Club competition, and his play ''The Sand Reckoner'', about Archimedes, received a staged reading at Harvard in 1995. He has also written five other plays, on mathematical and musical subjects. Rothman's published writings encompass hundreds of works in 7 languages and include 3,073 library holdings. WorldCat Identities Rothman, Tony
/ref> * 2022 — ''A Little Book about the Big Bang'' * 2016 — ''Physics Mastery'' * 2015 — ''The Course of Fortune'' * 2015 — ''Firebird'' * 2008 — '' Sacred Mathematics: Japanese Temple Geometry'' (with Hidetoshi Fukagawa) * 2003 — ''Everything's relative: and other fables from science and technology'' * 1998 — ''Doubt and certainty: the celebrated academy'' (with

E.C.G. Sudarshan Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan (also known as E. C. G. Sudarshan; 16 September 1931 – 13 May 2018) was an Indian American theoretical physicist and a professor at the University of Texas. Sudarshan has been credited with numerous contri ...

) * 1995 — '' Instant physics: from Aristotle to Einstein, and beyond '' * 1991 — ''A physicist on Madison Avenue'' * 1989 — ''Science à la mode: physical fashions and fictions'' * 1989 — ''Censored tales'' * 1985 — ''Frontiers of modern physics: new perspectives on cosmology, relativity, black holes, and extraterrestrial intelligence'' * 1978 — ''The World is Round''

Notes

External links

Tony Rothman's home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rothman, Tony 20th-century American novelists American male novelists American science fiction writers 1953 births Living people Swarthmore College alumni University of Texas at Austin alumni University of Cape Town alumni Harvard University faculty Princeton University faculty Bryn Mawr College faculty Illinois Wesleyan University faculty American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers Polytechnic Institute of New York University faculty 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Pennsylvania Novelists from New Jersey Novelists from Illinois Novelists from Massachusetts Novelists from New York (state)