Brian Greene - Brian Greene is Professor of Physics and co-director and co-founder of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University.
Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.
Brian Greene, string theory evangelist, introduces his big idea to help open the Ideas Festival.
He tells the story of a soldier in Iraq who found solace in the grand concepts in a book by Greene. Greene connects this to a need for better understanding and education of science in the American education system.