The magic of science

A lecture on the boundaries of knowledge and science, and on the magic of breaking those boundaries.

Thomas Hertog (BE)
°1975, Leuven

Thomas Hertog received his undergraduate degree from the KU Leuven and his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He joined the University of California as a research fellow in 2002 and became a fellow at CERN, Geneva, in 2005. Hertog returned to Belgium in 2011, where he is currently Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the KU Leuven.
Hertog is an internationally renowned cosmologist and a close collaborator of Stephen
Hawking. At the KU Leuven he leads a research group that studies the physical nature of the big bang on the basis of string theory, a speculative theory that potentially holds even when our notions of space and time fail to have any meaning. He also coordinates Belgium's participation in ESA's first space mission to probe the universe using gravitational waves. Hertog has lectured at both a general and a technical level in more than 25 countries and his research has featured in distinguished media channels. He lives with his wife and their four children in Bousval, Belgium.