Joel R. Primack, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, specializes in the formation and evolution of galaxies and the nature of the dark matter that makes up most of the mass in the universe. Primack received his A.B. in Physics summa cum laude from Princeton in 1966 and his Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford in 1970. He became a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University, and in 1973 joined the UCSC faculty. After helping to create what is now called the "Standard Model" of particle physics, Primack began working in cosmology in the late 1970s and he became a leader in the new field of particle astrophysics. He is one of the principal originators and developers of the theory of Cold Dark Matter, which has become the basis for the standard modern picture of structure formation in the universe. With support from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy, he is currently using supercomputers to simulate and visualize the evolution of the universe under various assumptions, and comparing the predictions of these theories to the latest observational data.

Primack has supervised part or all of the research of 40 graduate students and 10 postdocs. He was made a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1988 "for pioneering contributions to gauge theory and cosmology." He was elected to the Executive Committee of the APS Division of Astrophysics 2000-2002. He has won awards for his research from the A. P. Sloan Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Primack's research in cosmology is described in most modern books on the subject, and he has been profiled at some length in several books including New York Times science writer Dennis Overbye's Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos and former Time magazine science editor Michael Lemonick's The Light at the Edge of the Universe. He was one of the main advisors for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's 1996 IMAX film Cosmic Voyage. In addition to more than 200 technical articles in professional journals, Primack has written a number of articles aimed at a more popular audience. These include the articles on "gravitation," "matter," "dark matter," "dark energy," and other physics and astronomy topics in the World Book Encyclopedia, and articles in publications such as Nature, Science, Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Beam Line, California Wild, the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and the Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Primack has also been the Lansdowne Lecturer at the University of Victoria, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Lecturer at Los Alamos, and the Buhl Lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University.

With his wife and collaborator Nancy Ellen Abrams, Primack developed the award-winning course “Cosmology and Culture,” and they have been co-teaching it since 1996 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This course won awards from the John Templeton Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and was the basis for their first book, The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos (Penguin/Riverhead 2006), now also published in several foreign editions (see http://viewfromthecenter.com/, which also lists their many public talks). At Yale University in October 2009 they gave the Terry Lectures (http://www.yale.edu/terrylecture/thisyear.html), which became the basis for The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World (Yale Univ. Press, 2011)

Since he was a graduate student, Primack has actively sought to get better scientific advice into government. He was a founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists and has served on the board of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). He started the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Congressional Science Fellows Program in 1973, through which scientific societies fund PhD scientists to work in Congress for a year. The program has grown to include many fields of science, and in 1995 Primack was made an AAAS Fellow "for pioneering efforts in the establishment of the AAAS Congressional Science Fellows Program and for dedication to expanding the use of science in policymaking throughout government." In 1977 Primack shared with Frank von Hippel the APS Forum on Physics and Society Award for the book Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political Arena (Basic Books, 1974; New American Library, 1976). Primack helped designed and create the NSF Science for Citizens Program to fund scientists to advise public interest organizations. He was a charter member of the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, and he started the AAAS Science and Human Rights program to take up the cases of scientists persecuted by foreign governments and bring international pressure to bear to free them. In 1987-89 he led the FAS Space Nuclear Power Arms Control project, which succeeded in ending the USSR’s space nuclear reactor program. His popular articles on efforts to protect the near-Earth space environment, some co-authored with Nancy Ellen Abrams, have appeared in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Science, Scientific American, and Technology Review. Primack has also served as an advisor to and participant in the Science and the Spiritual Quest project and as chairman of the advisory committee for the AAAS Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion 2000-2002.

Primack was a member of the APS Panel on Public Affairs 2002-2004, he chaired an APS committee reporting on NASA funding for astronomy 2004, he chaired the APS Forum on Physics and Society 2005-06, and he chaired the committee on the APS Andrei Sakharov Prize on science and human rights in 2009. He has served on numerous advisory panels to DOE, NASA, and NSF, and on the Beyond Einstein Program Assessment Committee of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. In January 2010, Primack became the first director of the new University of California systemwide High-Performance AstroComputing Center (HIPACC).

Nancy Ellen Abrams is a philosopher of science, a lawyer, and a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is most recently the author of A GOD THAT COULD BE REAL: SPIRITUALITY, SCIENCE, AND THE FUTURE OF OUR PLANET (Beacon Press, 2015), which won the 2015 USA Best Book award in philosophy. It offers a radically new way to think about God that is coherent with all our knowledge, inspires a much larger and more exciting view of our place in reality, and makes all the benefits of spirituality available without compromising the truth.

In 2012 Nancy and Joel R. Primack (one of the world's leading cosmologists and co-author of Nancy's earlier two books) won the Chopra Foundation Prize and also the Nautilus Prize. The controversy surrounding their two books arises from the question of whether the serious cutting-edge astrophysics they present -- which has been universally praised for its accuracy and clarity -- should be combined with interpretation of what these discoveries might mean to an emerging global culture. But Abrams and Primack argue that a change in cosmology has historically always created a huge cultural shift, and if those who understand the new cosmology don't explain this, those who don't understand it are likely to misinterpret it, and the enormous social benefits of learning to think cosmically may be lost. The books are THE VIEW FROM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE: DISCOVERING OUR EXTRAORDINARY PLACE IN THE COSMOS (Penguin/Riverhead, 2006) and THE NEW UNIVERSE AND THE HUMAN FUTURE: HOW A SHARED COSMOLOGY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD (Yale University Press, 2011). THE NEW UNIVERSE grew out of the prestigious Terry Lectures, which Abrams and Primack delivered at Yale in October, 2009, and is filled with color illustrations and embedded videos, including supercomputer visualizations of the invisible but now understood workings of the universe. These videos can all be watched on the accompanying website, http://new-universe.org .

Abrams has worked in science policy for a trans-European environmental think tank in Rome, the Ford Foundation, and the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress. Her more political writing has appeared in journals, newspapers, and magazines, such as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Environment, California Lawyer, and Science and Global Security. She and Primack developed a course called "Cosmology and Culture" and have co-taught it for a decade at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The course has received awards from both the Templeton Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. She and Primack have also co-written articles that have appeared in books and magazines including Science, Astronomy Now, Philosophy in Science, Science & Spirit, Spirituality and Health, and Tikkun.

Nancy works as a scholar to put the discoveries of modern cosmology into a cultural context, as a lawyer to understand their potential impact on shaping a new politics, and as a writer and artist to communicate their possible meanings at a deeper level.