Michio Kaku has no documented IQ score, and no reliable figure circulates. A garage accelerator and a Harvard physics prize are evidence of talent, not a test result.
An unfinished manuscript and a garage full of copper
Born in San Jose on 24 January 1947. His Japanese-American parents had been held at the Tule Lake internment camp during the Second World War, where his older brother was born.
At eight, he saw a newspaper photo of Einstein's desk after his death, with an unfinished manuscript on it. Learning that it was a theory of everything Einstein couldn't finish, he decided to work on it himself.
At Cubberley High School he built a betatron, an electron accelerator, in his parents' garage, and took it to the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, where it caught the eye of physicist Edward Teller.
His parents helped him wind the wire on the high-school football field, running it between the goalposts, over the Christmas holidays. Every time he switched it on, it blew the fuses in the house.
Education, as energy levels
Each stage a jump up, with one detour sideways.
Palo Alto public school. The science-fair accelerator won him a Hertz Engineering Scholarship.
Graduated summa cum laude and first in his physics class.
Drafted during the Vietnam War; trained in the infantry at Fort Benning and Fort Lewis but was not sent overseas.
Doctorate from the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, finished alongside his army service.
After a year teaching at Princeton he joined the City College of New York, where he holds the Henry Semat Chair in theoretical physics.
How impossible is it?
In Physics of the Impossible (2008) he sorted sci-fi tech into three classes. Guess each one, then check it against his book.
Physics, books and broadcasts
With Keiji Kikkawa, wrote string theory in the language of fields, a founding paper of string field theory.
Graduate textbook, later expanded as Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory.
A modern graduate introduction to the subject.
Higher dimensions and the search for a unified theory.
Cosmology, the multiverse and the fate of the universe.
Predictions for technology up to 2100, based on interviews with scientists.
Neuroscience, brain–machine interfaces and consciousness.
The hunt for a theory of everything.
The coming impact of quantum computers.
Long-running science shows including Explorations and Science Fantastic, syndicated across the US.
Science Channel series testing the physics behind science-fiction ideas.
Regular guest on news, talk and documentary programmes as a physics commentator.
Sources
- Kaku, M. (2008). Physics of the Impossible. Doubleday
- Kaku, M. & Kikkawa, K. (1974). Field theory of relativistic strings. Physical Review D
- Kaku, M. (1994). Hyperspace. Oxford University Press
- City College of New York faculty records
- What's Your IQ editorial review of circulated figures