Another distinguished physicist: Robert Forward
Primo Levi
How come no one has mentioned the wheelchair guy?
Catherine Asaro has a PhD in chemical physics from Harvard, and a B.S. with highest honors in chemistry from UCLA. And she still teaches math, physics and chemistry while not writing (it says on Wikipedia).
He probably didn’t even write Contact.
Because Hawking hasn’t written anything but nonfiction science books.
Whoa! Further info?
Great one!
Robert Heinlein worked as an aeronautical engineer for the Navy during WWII.
Arthur C. Clarke earned his degree in mathematics and physics and is credited with the idea of using geosynchronous satellites for telecommunications.
A lot of the ones that first came to mind have aklready been listed. (And why limit it by saying "they didn’t regularly publish, or they weren’t real practicing scientists? If they got the required degrees and published at least one decent story, that counts for something, and is not a trivial accomplishment. Who cares is Solzhenitsyn ever actually earned money as a mathematician? And did Brian May ever draw pay as an astrophysicist? )
Larry Gonick, like Tom Lehrer, got his mathematics degrees at Harvard (BS and MS) and spent a year at the Tata Institute for Fundamemental Research in Bombay. He’s the author of multiple volumes of The Cattoon Guide to…, including The Cartoon Guide to the Universe/modern World in five volumes. He spent several years as Cartoonist-in-residence at MIT.
editor Groff Conklin produced a volume, first published in 1962, called Great Science Fiction by Scientists. In addition to the already-mentioned Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and John Taine/eric Temple Bell, it also had a piece by rocket scientist (and essayist extraordinaire) Willy Ley, and pieces by
**J.B. S. Haldane
Julian Huxley
Leo Szilard** (!)
and Norbert Weiner(!!)
(Who cares if they didn’t publish “regularly”)
It also has pieces by names unfamiliar to me –
**Miles J. Breuer
Ralph S. Cooper
Chan Davis
James V. Mcconnell
John R. Peirce
R.S. Richardson
Louis S. Ridenour
**
There’s also one by Chad Oliver, who I didn’t realize was a scientist.
Chad Oliver was an anthropologist. He was a real, practicing scientist but we’ve already questioned whether the social sciences should count. Miles J. Breuer was a doctor.
I can’t stop anybody from bringing up any names of any kind, but I’ll note that the OP did use the word “famous” to describe author, not scientist. And if you use his footnote of “scientists or mathematicians best known for their literary achievements and not their scientific accomplishments” the list gets real short real fast.
Asimov and Clarke and Doc Smith would make the second list. So would a bunch of others known for their sf, including Brin and Landis and Benford but probably not Cramer or Sagan or Hoyle. Outside the sf field, Primo Levi is maybe the best example. The Periodic Table is flat-out great.
If doctors are included, a bunch of famous names can be added: poets William Carlos Williams and Oliver Wendell Holmes, novelists Anton Chekhov, Kobo Abe and Somerset Maugham, that Conan Doyle guy, and bunches of people in and around sf again, from Michael Crichton to Stanislaw Lem.
MacSpon writes:
> Catherine Asaro has a PhD in chemical physics from Harvard, and a B.S. with
> highest honors in chemistry from UCLA. And she still teaches math, physics and
> chemistry while not writing (it says on Wikipedia).
I know Catherine a little. She has done a lot of things. She was a ballet dancer for a while. She was a physicist for a while (doing research, not teaching). She now spends most of her time writing science fiction and fantasy. She’s part of a rock group. Her teaching now is mostly tutoring gifted high school students in science. She’s been the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She serves on a government advisory board. And, incidentally, she looks about twenty years younger than her actual age.
Sort of (maybe).
He left off his doctorate studies when Queen’s popularity took off, and resumed those studies much later, finally being awarded his Ph.D. in 2007. He then served as chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University (taking over the post from Cherie Blair, the wife of former British PM Tony Blair) from 2008 to 2013.
While he was (during that time) working as an academician, it’s not clear to me if he was doing any work in astrophysics, or how much work being chancellor required (given that, during that time, he was also working on various Queen-related projects).
May also has co-written a book on astrophysics, and apparently made a couple of appearances on TV and radio programs about stars and stargazing.
To pick a nit, Asimov was a world famous science fiction author several years before he got his PhD.
But the first guy I thought of was Richard Dawkins, whose best (I think) selling book is about atheism.
No, not true. Bill Amend - Wikipedia
Bill has a bachelor of science degree in physics from Amherst. I do not believe he ever got a masters, but I am not certain. In any event, he has not ever held a position as a physicist to the best of my knowledge.
The Chancellor of a British university is an honorary, ceremonial post, given to people who are some sort of celebrity (of a relatively respectable sort) in the wider world. Often it will be a member of the royal family or something like that. It is not a real job, and they do little work for the university except sometimes (by no means always) handing out the degrees in the degree ceremony. The real head of a British university is the Vice Chancellor. It is he, or she, who really runs things.
In any case, even if Brian May had been Vice Chancellor of a university, that would say nothing about his scientific credentials.
His Wikipedia entry does not seem to indicate that he has done any scientific research since completing his Ph.D. On the other hand, a British Ph.D., unlike an American one, is entirely a research degree, and anyone who has been awarded one has been judged to have made a real and significant contribution to research in their field (and very often that research will be published). Someone with British science Ph.D., even if they do not continue a career in science, can fairly be said to be (or to have been) a real scientist.
In Britain, back in the day, Hoyle’s SF was pretty well known and widely read, and probably read by some people who knew little about his actual scientific achievements. I read and enjoyed several of his Sf books when I was a boy. (Not the later ones, co-written with his son, which were generally held to be inferior to the first few, I think.) The two Andromeda stories were also successful TV series.
May has been published in peer review publications. He is listed as a visiting researcher at the Imperial College Website.
KarlGauss, were you limiting the subject of this thread to fiction authors? People are starting to list scientists who wrote strictly nonfiction. Again, if the thread drifts off into that, it’s going to be a very long thread.
robert_columbia writes:
> Does linguistics count? If so, J. R. R. Tolkien surely belongs on the list.
Tolkien was never in the field of linguistics. He taught Medieval literature at Oxford. He never taught linguistics courses and never published any papers on linguistics. Yes, he knew a lot of languages, but that doesn’t make him an expert on linguistics.
Danicka Mckellar has a Ph.D in Math from UCLA. Though not an author, she is a working actress.