Alan Lightman is a novelist, essayist, physicist, and educator. He received his A.B. degree in physics from Princeton University in 1970, and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1974.

From 1974 to 1976, Lightman was a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at Cornell. During this period, he began publishing poetry in small literary magazines. He was an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard from 1976 to 1979 and from 1979 to 1989 a research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

In 1989, Lightman was appointed professor of science and writing, and senior lecturer in physics, at MIT. From 1991 to 1997, he headed the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT. In 1995, he was appointed John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at MIT. In 2001, he resigned this position to allow more time for his writing and became an adjunct professor.