Michio Kaku
Theoretical Physicist
What mysteries of the universe might we discover when curiosity takes us beyond the known?
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Michio Kaku in conversation with Great Mystery
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Exploring the Unknown
For Michio Kaku, science begins with curiosity—the willingness to ask questions about what lies beyond the boundaries of what we can see, touch, and understand.
As a child, Kaku watched the carp swimming beneath the lily pads of San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden and wondered what it would be like to live in a two-dimensional world. He imagined a fish scientist who could not conceive of a reality beyond the pond—and then imagined lifting that scientist into a higher dimension. What would the fish see? A whole new world, governed by entirely new possibilities.
That question has remained at the heart of Kaku’s work: Could our own universe be only part of a much larger reality?
His childhood fascination with science fiction led him not away from science, but deeper into it. Rather than simply imagining time travel, antimatter, higher dimensions, and starships, he wanted to understand what the laws of physics actually allow. He studied theoretical physics and mathematics in order to explore the frontier where imagination meets what science can demonstrate.
As a theoretical physicist and co-founder of string field theory, Kaku explores some of the most fundamental mysteries of existence: the nature of space and time, higher dimensions, parallel universes, the origins of the cosmos, and the possibility of a deeper theory unifying the laws of nature.
For Kaku, however, science is not about memorizing facts. It is about principles, concepts, and the power to imagine. The great ideas are those we can picture in the mind—ideas that allow us to see beyond the limits of what we currently know.
ABOUT
Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, co-founder of String Field Theory, author, and one of the world’s best-known science communicators. He is the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York and has written numerous international bestsellers, including Hyperspace, Physics of the Impossible, The Future of the Mind, and The God Equation.
Born in San Jose, California, to Japanese American parents, Kaku’s fascination with physics began in high school, when he built a particle accelerator in his mother’s garage. Inspired by Albert Einstein’s unfinished search for a unified theory of physics, he went on to devote his career to exploring the fundamental laws of the universe and the possibilities they may reveal.
Kaku has made some of the most challenging ideas in modern physics accessible to a broad audience, exploring subjects including quantum physics, string theory, higher dimensions, time travel, artificial intelligence, and the origins and future of the cosmos. Through his books, radio and television appearances, lectures, and his science series Sci-Fi Science, he has helped bring questions once confined to laboratories and lecture halls into the wider cultural imagination.
For Kaku, physicist and communicator are inseparable. His passion is to translate the mysteries of the universe into ideas that anyone can enter—and to inspire the curiosity that drives scientific discovery.