PAUL DAVIES

'Paul Charles William Davies' (born April 22, 1946) is a British-born, physicist, writer and broadcaster, who holds the position of College Professor at Arizona State University. He has held previous academic appointments at the University of Cambridge, University of London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option.
In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics.
He attended and was a speaker at the symposium on November 2006.

Contents

Scientific papers

Books

Awards

Criticism

References

External links

Scientific papers

Paul Davies' papers listed on Spires (also as Davies P)

Books

He is the author of over twenty books, including ''The Mind of God'', ''Other Worlds'', ''God and the New Physics'', ''The Edge of Infinity'', ''The Runaway Universe'', ''The Cosmic Blueprint'', ''Are We Alone? The Fifth Miracle'', ''The Last Three Minutes'', ''Superforce'', ''The Accidental Universe'', ''About Time'', ''How to Build a Time Machine'', ''The Goldilocks Enigma'', '', and ''Cosmic Jackpot''
He was also heavily referenced in the novel ''Naive. Super'' by Norwegian writer Erlend Loe (translated by Tor Ketil Solberg), published in 1996.

Awards

Davies' talent as a communicator of science has been recognized in Australia by an Advance Australia Award and two Eureka Prizes, and in the UK by the 2001 Kelvin Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics, and the 2002 Faraday Prize by The Royal Society. For his contributions to the deeper implications of science, Davies received the Templeton Prize in 1995.
He has an Erdős Number of four.

Criticism

Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion wrote, "Paul Davies's The Mind of God seems to hover somewhere between Einsteinian pantheism and an obscure form of deism - for which he was rewarded with the Templeton Prize (a very large sum of money given annually by the Templeton Foundation, usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion)."^[1]
However in one of his essays, "What Happened Before the Big Bang?", Paul Davies shows skepticism of Big Bang having caused by any form of supernatural cause. He wrote, "Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event."^[2]

References

1. http://richarddawkins.net/godDelusion
2. http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html

External links

★ Paul Davies @ Arizona State University

★ Interview with Paul Davies at Astroseti.Org

★ SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup

★ Math genealogy

★ Summary of Davies' works and biography