Virtual Event: Alan Lightman

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library welcomes ALAN LIGHTMAN—author of the acclaimed, bestselling novels Einstein's Dreams, The Diagnosis, and Three Flames—for a discussion of his latest book, Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings. He will be joined in conversation by award-winning cosmologist and novelist JANNA LEVIN, author of Black Hole Survival Guide.

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About Probable Impossibilities

Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab?

Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom the Washington Post has called "the poet laureate of science writers," explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaging consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger, and smaller, than ourselves.

Praise for Probable Impossibilities

“Lightman’s awe about the physical world is infectious. He speaks with the authority of a scientist, specifically a former Harvard astrophysicist, and the eloquence of a novelist . . . Probable Impossibilities offers a primer on many of modern science’s most mind-blowing discoveries, incorporating profiles of scientists performing cutting-edge research. Lightman weaves his own story and voice though the book.” —Publishers Weekly

“Radiant . . . Provocative . . . Lightman, matching fact with awe, pilots readers on enlivening and enlightening thought voyages into such realms as quantum physics, genetics, miracles, and the expanding universe, each foray offering new coordinates, evocative vistas, and deepened understanding.” —Booklist

"A series of essays on creation, consciousness, and our place in the universe, Lightman turns his attention to some of our biggest questions about infinity and nothingness." —Buzzfeed