Brian Keating is a Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences (CASS) in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. He is a public speaker, inventor, and an expert in the study of the universe’s oldest light, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), using it to learn about the origin and evolution of the universe. Keating is a writer and podcaster and the best-selling author of one of Amazon Editors’ ‘Best Non-fiction Books of All Time”, Losing the Nobel Prize.

He has lectured on six of the seven continents, including Antarctica. He is an expert in the study of the universe’s oldest light, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which he uses to investigate the origin and evolution of the universe.

Keating is a pioneer in the search for the earliest physical evidence of the inflationary epoch, the theorized period of expansion of space in the early universe directly after the Big Bang. Physicists predict that this evidence will reveal itself as a particular pattern in the way CMB light is polarized; this pattern is referred to as a B-mode pattern, and Keating designed the first experiment dedicated to detecting it (BICEP).

In 2014, amidst the purported detection of this long-sought signal, Keating was busy co-teaching a course at UC San Diego entitled “Poetry for Physicists”, with Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout.