A short life of the author
Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who writes about the deepest questions in physics — the nature of time, the structure of space, the meaning of quantum mechanics — with a literary grace and philosophical ambition that have made him the most celebrated science writer of the twenty-first century. His Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2014), originally published as a series of newspaper articles in Il Sole 24 Ore, has sold over two million copies in forty-one languages, making it one of the bestselling science books ever written. But Rovelli is not merely a populariser: he is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, a major approach to the problem of reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics, and his popular writing draws directly on his own research at the frontier of theoretical physics.
The Physicist
Carlo Rovelli was born in Verona, Italy, in 1956. He was a student activist in the radical movements of the 1970s in Bologna before turning to physics at the University of Bologna, where he received his laurea, and the University of Padua, where he earned his PhD. After postdoctoral work at the University of Rome and Yale, he held faculty positions at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Trento before joining the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, where he has been based since 2000. He also holds an appointment at the Perimeter Institute in Canada.
His principal scientific contribution is loop quantum gravity (LQG), developed with Lee Smolin and Abhay Ashtekar, which attempts to quantise general relativity without the extra dimensions required by string theory. LQG proposes that space is not continuous but granular — composed of discrete “loops” of gravitational field at the Planck scale — and that time is not a fundamental feature of reality but an emergent phenomenon. These ideas, which challenge the most basic assumptions about the nature of reality, form the intellectual foundation of Rovelli’s popular writing.
The Books
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2014) is an extraordinary publishing phenomenon — a ninety-six-page book that explains general relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, particle physics, quantum gravity, and the nature of time in prose of luminous simplicity. Its success lies in Rovelli’s ability to convey not just the content of modern physics but its emotional and aesthetic quality — the beauty of Einstein’s equations, the strangeness of quantum phenomena, the vertigo of contemplating a universe without fixed time.
Reality Is Not What It Seems (2014) is a longer, more ambitious book that traces the history of physics from Democritus to loop quantum gravity, arguing that the deepest insights of modern physics — the granularity of space, the relational nature of time, the dissolution of the boundary between observer and observed — were anticipated by ancient atomism. The Order of Time (2017) is Rovelli’s most philosophical work, a meditation on the nature of time that draws on Boltzmann, Heidegger, Proust, and the Mahabharata to argue that time as we experience it — flowing, directional, universal — is an illusion generated by our thermodynamic perspective on a timeless universe.
Helgoland (2020) retells the story of quantum mechanics from Werner Heisenberg’s breakthrough on the island of Helgoland in 1925 and advocates a “relational” interpretation in which quantum properties exist only in relation to other physical systems, not in absolute terms. White Holes (2023) explores what happens inside black holes using the framework of loop quantum gravity.
The Writer
What distinguishes Rovelli from other physicist-writers is his literary and philosophical culture. He writes about physics in conversation with Lucretius, Dante, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. His prose is allusive, poetic, and personal — he is present in his books as a feeling and thinking human being, not merely as an explainer. He has cited Italo Calvino as a literary model, and his writing shares Calvino’s combination of lightness and intellectual depth.
His essay collection There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness (2020) gathers his newspaper columns on science, philosophy, politics, and culture, revealing the breadth of his interests and the generosity of his intelligence.
Collecting Rovelli
Sette brevi lezioni di fisica (Adelphi, Milan, 2014) in the original Italian edition is the key Rovelli title. The English translation, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Allen Lane, London, 2015; Riverhead, New York, 2016), is widely available. First editions of any title in fine condition are collected, though the books’ massive print runs mean that scarcity is not yet a factor.