Adam Becker

Adam Becker is an author, science journalist, and public speaker. He has written for the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, Scientific American, Quanta, New Scientist, Undark, and many other publications. His critically-acclaimed first book, What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, was longlisted for the 2018 PEN Literary Science Writing Award and shortlisted for Physics World’s Book of the Year. In addition to his writing, Adam has designed and coded multiple interactive online features, including a playable essay explaining one of the deepest mysteries of quantum physics. Adam has also appeared on numerous radio shows and podcasts, including Ologies with Alie Ward, KQED Forum, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, and The Story Collider. Adam co-authored a script on incompleteness and the halting problem for Veritasium, a popular YouTube science channel; the resulting video has over 20 million views. He has also recorded an animated physics video series with the BBC.

Adam holds a PhD in cosmology from the University of Michigan. He was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Office for the History of Science and Technology during the writing of his first book, and a visiting researcher at UC Irvine’s Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science for the 2020-2021 academic year. He was awarded a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support the writing of his first book. He has also received a second grant from the Sloan Foundation to support the book he is currently working on, about the intersection of science, futurism, and Silicon Valley.