Steven Weinberg is one of the towering figures of physics. His research on elementary particle physics and cosmology has been honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics, the National Medal of Science, the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society, the Dannie Heinemann Prize for Mathematical Physics, and numerous other awards. He has been elected to the National Academy of Science and Britain's Royal Society and other academies, and holds 16 honorary doctoral degrees. He has written more than 300 scientific articles along with six treatises on general relativity, quantum field theory, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. He is also a lively expositor who enjoys talking to science writers; this is Weinberg’s third appearance as a New Horizons in Science speaker. Among his books for general readers are Dreams of a Final Theory, The First Three Minutes, and two collections of published essays, Facing Up: Science and its Cultural Adversaries, and Lake Views: This World and the Universe. Many of these essays first appeared in the New York Review of Books. His essay writing has earned Weinberg the Lewis Thomas Award for the Scientist as Poet and other awards. His latest book, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, was published in 2015. Educated at Cornell, Copenhagen, and Princeton, he taught at Columbia, Berkeley, MIT and Harvard, where he was Higgins Professor of Physics, before coming to Texas in 1982.