Leonard Mlodinow

Leonard Mlodinow, born in 1954, is an American theoretical physicist and a highly successful popular-science author. He was Hawking's writing partner on two of his later books, bringing a storyteller's craft to Hawking's ideas.

His own work

Mlodinow has had an unusually varied career. As a physicist he worked on quantum theory; he also spent years writing for television, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, before becoming a best-selling author in his own right. His solo books, on subjects from randomness to the unconscious mind, are admired for making difficult ideas vivid and accessible, exactly the skill that made him an ideal collaborator for Hawking.

His connection to Hawking

Mlodinow co-wrote two books with Hawking. The first, A Briefer History of Time (2005), was a shorter, clearer reworking of Hawking's most famous book, designed for readers who had found the original daunting. The second, The Grand Design (2010), was more ambitious and more controversial, arguing that modern physics, and M-theory in particular, can explain the existence of the universe without invoking a creator.

Their partnership reflected something Hawking valued throughout his career: the conviction that profound science is worth nothing if it cannot be communicated, a theme explored on the page about how he thought. Mlodinow helped him honour that conviction late in life.