Michio Kaku

Kaku was born in San Jose, California, to Toshio, a gardener, and Hideko, a maid. His parents were kibei who had been educated in Japan before World War II, and the U.S. government confined them in a camp during the war.⁠[1]

He recalls that his parents’ assets were frozen during the war and they were penniless on release, which taught him as a child that he would have to achieve things on his own.⁠[2]

He recalls that when he was 8, newspapers carried news of a great scientist’s death with a photo of an unfinished book on his desk; he later learned the man was Albert Einstein and the book concerned the unified field theory, which became the focus of his life.⁠[3]

He recalls building a 2.3-million-electron-volt electron accelerator in his garage in high school using 22 miles of copper wire; it took him to the national science fair, where he met Edward Teller, who funded his studies at 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.⁠[2]

Kaku graduated in 1968 as the top physics concentrator in his Harvard class. After his draft board told him he would soon be called up, he volunteered for the army; a blood test showing he was partially diabetic later let him leave the military.⁠[4]

He says he has worked on string theory since 1968 and regards it as the leading candidate for a “theory of everything.”⁠[3]

Kaku was a research assistant at 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 from 1970 to 1972 and a postdoctoral lecturer at Princeton UniversityPrinceton 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 from 1972 to 1973.⁠[5]

He became an assistant professor at the City College of New York in 1973, received tenure in 1976 and has been a professor since 1984.⁠[5]

In 1974 Kaku and Keiji Kikkawa created the field theory of strings, showing in the light-cone gauge that the sum of the s- and t-channel terms gives exactly the Veneziano model, so that string theory could be summarized in a simple Lagrangian.⁠[6]

In the mid-1980s Kaku helped gather scientists’ signatures on a petition refusing Star WarsStar WarsStar Wars is a space-fantasy film and entertainment franchise created by George Lucas and now owned by Lucasfilm, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.Open the full entry research and took part in presenting it to the United Nations. In late 1986 his To Win a Nuclear War, on declassified Pentagon war plans, was published.⁠[4]

In 1994 he published the best-selling Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension.⁠[7]

The publisher calls it the first book-length exploration of the theory of 10-dimensional space and presents hyperspace theory as a leading candidate for the Theory of Everything that Einstein sought in his final years.⁠[8]

In 1997 Kaku received honorary doctorates from Hofstra University and the State University of New York at Old Westbury and published Visions the same year.⁠[1]

Visions discusses the scientific revolutions of quantum mechanics, biogenetics and artificial intelligence and how they will change science and the way people live.⁠[9]

In 2005 Doubleday published Kaku’s Parallel Worlds, which outlines “theories of everything” and focuses on M-theory, a derivative of string theory in which our universe is one of innumerable parallel universes in eleven-dimensional space.⁠[10]

Physics of the Impossible was published in hardcover on March 11, 2008; inspired by works such as Star TrekStar TrekStar Trek is a science-fiction franchise originating in the work of Gene Roddenberry. Its central subjects include exploration aboard starships, encounters across cultures and humanity’s future. It spans television, film, animation and other media, with a long-established fan community.Open the full entry and Star Wars, it examines what physical laws may permit for teleportation, time machines, force fields and interstellar ships.⁠[11]

Science Channel’s series Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, hosted by Kaku, premiered on the evening of December 1, 2009, with a first episode on the feasibility of exploring outer space through faster-than-light travel.⁠[12]

On June 10, 2010, Science Channel announced that the series had been renewed for a second season, scheduled to premiere that fall.⁠[13]

Physics of the Future was published on March 15, 2011, describing developments in computing, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel and other fields that may occur over the next century.⁠[14]

That month he appeared on CBSCBSCBS is an American commercial broadcast television network. It was founded in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters, renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, and grew from a radio network into a television network under William S. Paley. With ABC and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it has been owned in turn by Westinghouse, Viacom, ViacomCBS and Paramount Global, has been owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation since 2025, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry Boston’s radio program NightSide to discuss where science is heading and what the year 2100 will look like.⁠[15]

The Future of the Mind, published on February 25, 2014, became a No. 1 New York Times best seller; focused on brain research, it discusses telepathy experiments, recording memories and dreams, and the idea of uploading the brain to a computer.⁠[16]

In March 2014 he and Takahiro Kubota published an obituary of Keiji Kikkawa in Physics Today.⁠[6]

Kaku hosts Exploration, a science program on New York public radio station WBAI covering astrophysics, technology, futurism and science fiction; in January 2015 WMNF in Florida aired an episode.⁠[17]

The program, Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku, is a weekly hour on science, technology, politics and the environment, broadcast on WBAI (99.5 FM) and re-aired on stations across the country.⁠[18]

The Future of Humanity, published on February 20, 2018, explores terraforming and building cities on Mars and the possibility of interstellar travel using nanoships, laser sails and fusion rockets.⁠[19]

A Christian Science Monitor review called him a practiced and very effective popularizer of science but described the book’s speculations about alternate dimensions as unmoored from reality.⁠[7]

Kaku lives in New York City with his wife, Shizue, and they have two daughters, Alyson and Michelle. Michelle Kaku writes that her father watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with them; she later became a neurologist and an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Medicine.⁠[20]

He appeared on 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, whose description calls him a theoretical physicist, futurist and professor at the City College of New York; topics included contact with aliens, the multiverse, string theory, Einstein’s God, brain-machine interfaces, existential risk from AI, digital and biological immortality, the universe as a simulation and the first human on Mars.⁠[21]

The God Equation, published on April 6, 2021, became a No. 1 New York Times best seller; it tells the story of physics’ quest for a theory of everything that would unite relativity and quantum theory.⁠[22]

In January 2022 he appeared on episode 562 of The Tim Ferriss Show, discussing time travel, parallel universes, string theory and lessons from Einstein.⁠[23]

Quantum Supremacy, published on May 2, 2023, became a New York Times best seller; it introduces quantum computing and its potential uses for artificial intelligence, global warming and disease, and the publisher describes him as science correspondent for CBS’s This Morning and host of the radio program Science Fantastic.⁠[24]

In March 2025 he traveled to India for the Second Global SSI Multi-Speciality Robotic Surgery Conference (SMRSC 2025), organized by SS Innovations. In an interview there he said he is first a physicist and that communicating physics to the public is his hobby, and voiced concern about quantum computing’s threat to encryption.⁠[25]

X: Public account: https://x.com/michiokaku (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

City College of New York: Official website: https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]