Brian Greene is a media-friendly Columbia physics professor known for popularizing the abstruse field of theoretical physics, particularly string theory. He has published four books, including 2 New York Times bestsellers.

Greene was raised on the Upper West Side where he proved himself to be quite the child prodigy: At 5, he was multiplying 30-digit numbers; by the time he'd reached middle school, he was taking math classes at Columbia. After graduating from Stuyvesant, Greene went to Harvard, then on to graduate work at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (alongside then-friend George Stephanopoulos) in the mid-1980s. He became a professor of physics at Cornell in 1990, earning tenure at the relatively young age of 32. He jumped to Columbia in 1996 and currently heads up the university's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics.

Greene's ability to discuss heady issues in public and on camera has made him something of a household name. His stardom has landed him on talk shows like The Colbert Report and cameos on film and TV.

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