Max Tegmark (born 5 May 1967) is a Swedish-American cosmologist. Tegmark is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he belongs to the scientific directorate of the Foundational Questions Institute.
Max Tegmark | |
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| Born | May 5, 1967 |
Biography
Early life
Tegmark was born as Max Shapiro in Sweden, son of Karin Tegmark and Harold S. Shapiro, studied at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and later received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. After having worked at the University of Pennsylvania, he is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Career
As part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey team, he has worked on data analysis, extracting the parameters of the Lambda-CDM model from observational large-scale structure and cosmic microwave background data.
He developed the quantum suicide thought experiment from earlier proposals by Hans Moravec and Bruno Marchal, and has come up with a mathematical argument for the multiverse.
He has also been a strong critic of those who would infer a theory of consciousness from quantum effects, such as Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff.
Tegmark has also formulated the "Ultimate ensemble theory of everything", whose only postulate is that "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically". This simple theory, with no free parameters at all, suggests that in those structures complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real" world. This idea is formalized as the "Mathematical universe hypothesis" in his paper The mathematical universe, a short version of which was published as Shut up and calculate.
Personal life
He is married to astrophysicist Angelica de Oliveira-Costa and they have two sons, Philip and Alexander.
Trivia
This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (December 2008) |
- In 2006, Tegmark was one of fifty scientists interviewed by New Scientist about their predictions for the future. His prediction: "In 50 years, you may be able to buy T-shirts on which are printed equations describing the unified laws of our universes." [1]
- Tegmark appears in the documentary "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" in which he is interviewed by Mark Oliver Everett, the son of the founder of the Many Worlds Interpretation, Hugh Everett.
See also
