About

Adam Frank fell in love with astronomy when he was 5 years old and the affair has never cooled.

Late one night in the family library, Adam found the keys to the universe sketched out on the covers of his dad’s pulp-science-fiction magazines—astronauts bounding across the jagged frontiers of alien worlds, starships rising to discovery on pillars of fire. The boundless world of possibilities on those covers became the one he was determined to inhabit.

Later, the love for astronomy transformed into a passion for the practice of science itself when his father’s simple explanation of electric currents and sound waves turned the terror of a booming thunderstorm into an opportunity to marvel at the world’s beauty. He is now the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester.

For many years Adam was a leading expert on the final stages of evolution for stars like the sun and the formation of powerful jets when stars first form. His computational research group at the University of Rochester developed advanced supercomputer tools for studying how stars form and how planets evolve. His current work focuses on life in the Universe, the search for “technosignatures” of other exo-civilizations, along with climate change and the “Astrobiology of the Anthropocene.” He has also carrying out work on the physics of life through studies via an information theory perspective.

A self-described “evangelist of science,” Adam is committed to showing others the beauty and power of science, and exploring the proper context of science in culture. His last book Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth received praise from The New York Times, NPR and Scientific American. He has written two other books, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Religion and Science Debate, and About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang. 

Adam’s newest work is The Little Book of Aliens. 

Adam is a regular on-air commentator for CNN and has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered. He was co-founder of National Public Radio 13.7: Cosmos and Culture blog, which ran for 7 years. He is also a contributor to The New York Times, The Atlantic and other media outlets. He currently runs the 13.8 blog on BigThink.com. He was also the science consultant for Marvel’s Dr. Strange (best day ever!). Adam has appeared on many popular media outlets such as the Joe Rogan show, Pharrel Williams iamOTHER podcast, Coast to Coast Radio and others. He has also appeared on a variety of national and international science documentaries such as Alien Worlds (Netflix 2020), Mars (Season 2, National Geographic) and The Universe on the History Channel.

Adam has received a number of awards for his scientific and outreach work. His book Light of the Stars won the 2019 National Honors Society Best Book in Science. In 2020 he was given the American Physical Society’s Joseph A. Burton Forum Award. In 2021 he was granted the Carl Sagan Medal for excellence in public communication by the American Astronomical Society.