21 Facts About Kip Thorne

Kip Thorne continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.

Kip Thorne's father, D Wynne Thorne, was a professor of soil chemistry at Utah State University, and his mother, Alison, was an economist and the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Iowa State College.

Kip Thorne rapidly excelled at academics early in life, winning recognition in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search as a senior at Logan High School.

Kip Thorne received his BS degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1962, and his PhD from Princeton University in 1965 under the supervision of John Archibald Wheeler with a doctoral dissertation entitled "Geometrodynamics of Cylindrical Systems".

Kip Thorne returned to Caltech as an associate professor in 1967 and became a professor of theoretical physics in 1970, becoming one of the youngest full professors in the history of Caltech at age 30.

Kip Thorne was an adjunct professor at the University of Utah from 1971 to 1998 and Andrew D White Professor at Large at Cornell University from 1986 to 1992.

Kip Thorne is known for his ability to convey the excitement and significance of discoveries in gravitation and astrophysics to both professional and lay audiences.

Kip Thorne's research has principally focused on relativistic astrophysics and gravitation physics, with emphasis on relativistic stars, black holes and especially gravitational waves.

Kip Thorne is perhaps best known to the public for his controversial theory that wormholes can conceivably be used for time travel.

Kip Thorne's work has dealt with the prediction of gravitational wave strengths and their temporal signatures as observed on Earth.

Kip Thorne carries out engineering design analyses for features of the LIGO that cannot be developed on the basis of experiment and he gives advice on data analysis algorithms by which the waves will be sought.

Kip Thorne found out eventually that the gravitational force can overcome all interior pressure only when an object has been compressed in all directions.

Kip Thorne has investigated the quantum statistical mechanical origin of the entropy of a black hole.

Kip Thorne laid the foundations for the theory of pulsations of relativistic stars and the gravitational radiation they emit.

Kip Thorne has written and edited books on topics in gravitational theory and high-energy astrophysics.

In 2014, Kip Thorne published The Science of Interstellar in which he explains the science behind Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar; Nolan wrote the foreword to the book.

Kip Thorne has published more than 150 articles in scholarly journals.

Kip Thorne has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Danforth Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, and Fulbright Fellow.

Kip Thorne has received the honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from Claremont Graduate University and an honorary doctorate from the Physics Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Kip Thorne was elected to hold the Lorentz chair for the year 2009 Leiden University, the Netherlands.

Kip Thorne was selected by Time magazine in an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the American world in 2016.