Brian Keating

Keating first saw the moons of Jupiter at 13, which sparked his passion for astronomy; he bought a telescope and read Galileo. At 17 he became a physics major at Case Western Reserve University, and after graduating in 1993 he pursued a PhD in experimental cosmology at Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

His father was the late mathematician James Ax, a business partner of James Simons; Simons said he had known Keating since he was little.⁠[2]

At Brown University he received an MS in physics in 1995 and a PhD in 2000 under Peter Timbie, holding a NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry Graduate Student Research Fellowship from 1995 to 1999.⁠[3]

He did postdoctoral research at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and was then an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech before coming to UC San Diego in 2004.⁠[4]

From 2001 he worked at Caltech with astrophysicist Andrew Lange and developed a telescope called BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) to study the cosmic microwave background; it was built and erected at the South Pole.⁠[1]

He was assistant professor of physics at UC San Diego from 2004 to 2009 and associate professor from 2009 to 2014, becoming professor in 2015; since 2011 he has also been co-director of the Ax Center for Experimental Cosmology.⁠[3]

BICEP observed from the South Pole for three seasons from 2005 to 2008 and in 2009 set the first limit on the energy scale of inflation using cosmic microwave background B-mode polarization; an NSF CAREER grant running from March 2006 to February 2011 funded his use of BICEP to study cosmic inflation.⁠[5]

In 2007 he received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for BICEP, a telescope he invented and deployed at the U.S. South Pole research station.⁠[6]

The first POLARBEAR telescope was set up on Cerro Toco in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 2012; in January 2013 UC San Diego announced a $4.3 million Simons Foundation grant to build two more telescopes, the three together to be called the Simons Array, led by Keating, then an associate professor, with Adrian Lee of UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry.⁠[7]

On March 17, 2014, the BICEP2 team announced at the HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics a cosmic microwave background polarization signal they presented as support for inflation. Keating had led the development of the original BICEP and was on the BICEP2 team but felt pushed aside; later analysis showed the signal was mostly dust in the Milky Way.⁠[8]

In June 2015 the NSF awarded $5 million to the Simons Array for three years of observations and data analysis; it was one of four cosmology proposals funded out of more than 40 applicants in 2014, and was led by Keating and Adrian Lee.⁠[9]

In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and became principal investigator of the Simons Observatory cosmic microwave background experiment in Chile’s Atacama Desert.⁠[4]

In May 2016 the Simons Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation announced a five-year, $40 million grant to UC San Diego and four other institutions to combine POLARBEAR/Simons Array with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and add new telescopes as the Simons Observatory, with Keating as project director.⁠[10]

James Simons gave $38.4 million and the Heising-Simons Foundation $1.7 million; Keating recalled sketching his ideas on a napkin when he met Simons for lunch in PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry the previous year.⁠[2]

His first book, Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor, was released on April 24, 2018, mixing autobiography, criticism of the Nobel Prize and an account of the experiment to find evidence of cosmic inflation.⁠[11]

In the book he argues that the Nobel Prize discourages collaboration and proposes removing the limit of three laureates per prize and allowing posthumous awards.⁠[8]

In April 2019 the Simons Array deployed the first of three new POLARBEAR-2 telescopes at its 17,000-foot site on Cerro Toco, where UC San Diego PhD students and collaborators from UC Berkeley and Japan’s KEK installed a receiver and optical components.⁠[12]

By June 2019 Losing the Nobel Prize had been named one of the best science books of 2018 by AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry, Forbes and Science Friday; he had received UC San Diego’s Excellence in Stewardship Award, become an honorary member of the National Society of Black Physicists and received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professorship in Physics.⁠[13]

In September 2021 Lioncrest Publishing published his Into the Impossible: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner.⁠[14]

The book is based on interviews from his podcast, The INTO THETimes Higher EducationTimes Higher Education (THE) is a London-based higher education news and data company. It grew out of the Times Higher Education Supplement, launched in 1971, and is best known for its World University Rankings, founded in 2004; it has been owned by the private equity firm Inflexion since 2019.Open the full entry IMPOSSIBLE Podcast, and distills the lessons of nine Nobel laureates.⁠[15]

On January 18, 2022, he appeared on episode 257 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, titled around cosmology, astrophysics, aliens and Losing the Nobel Prize, with segments on BICEP, gravitational waves, the Nobel Prize, Galileo and the James Webb telescope.⁠[16]

On March 28, 2022, Big Bang Productions released an audiobook of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in which Keating reads Sagredo, with Carlo Rovelli, Lucio Piccirillo, Fabiola Gianotti, S. James Gates and Frank WilczekFrank WilczekFrank Wilczek is an American theoretical physicist who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery, with David Gross and others, of asymptotic freedom in the strong interaction; he also introduced and developed the ideas of axions, anyons and time crystals and is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at MIT.Open the full entry among the readers.⁠[17]

On November 19, 2022, he was honored as a Legend of Flight by the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum, where his portrait is permanently displayed; he was the second honoree from the UC San Diego physics department, after Sally Ride in 1985.⁠[18]

On October 12, 2023, he gave the fall Gundzik Lecture at his alma mater, Case Western Reserve University, titled “Revealing the History and Future of the Universe with the Cosmic Microwave Background.”⁠[19]

That month the university’s College of Arts and Sciences presented him its Distinguished Undergraduate Alumni Award during the October 12–15 reunion weekend.⁠[6]

In June 2024 two small-aperture telescopes of the Simons Observatory, located 17,000 feet up Cerro Toco, had completed initial testing and begun science observations; the collaboration is led by principal investigator Keating.⁠[20]

In September 2025 Lioncrest Publishing published the 222-page Into the Impossible Volume 2: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, which draws on interviews with Nobel laureates to discuss focus and prioritization.⁠[21]

As of October 2026 his website describes him as Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego and principal investigator of the Simons Observatory, and he publishes a newsletter called Monday M.A.G.I.C.⁠[22]

He has authored more than 100 publications and holds two patents, co-leads the POLARBEAR/Simons Array collaborations, is a pilot with multi-engine turbine ratings and is a trustee of MoMath and the San Diego Air & Space Museum.⁠[23]

He lives with his family in La Jolla, California.⁠[24]

Personal website: Public link: https://briankeating.com (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Briankeating (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-keating-ab893a10a/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

UC San Diego: Official website: https://ucsd.edu (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

Simons Observatory: Official website: https://simonsobservatory.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]