“Many different planets are many different distances from their host star; we find ourselves at this distance because if we were closer or farther away, the temperature would be hotter or colder, eliminating liquid water, an essential ingredient for our survival.”

American physicist, professor, and science festival chairman

Brian Greene is an American physicist and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University. He is known for his work on string theory and for co-founding the World Science Festival in 2008. He directs Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Physics and serves as chairman of the festival. Greene also co-discovered mirror symmetry, a relation between two different Calabi-Yau manifolds, and described the flop transition and the conifold transition, showing how topology can change smoothly in string theory.