Visiting Professor Catherine Asaro Intertwines Physics and Fiction

Catherine Asaro, a highly respected doctor of chemical physics and published author of science fiction, is a visiting professor in the physics department at UMBC this summer.

Her combined love of both “real world” science and that of science fiction stems largely from her parents. Asaro’s father, a scientist, and mother, an English major who loved to write, exposed her to both fields. However, it was not only science and a passion for writing that directed her studies. Starting at the age of five, Asaro studied ballet and passed five grades of the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus and continued to dance in college. She founded the Mainly Jazz Dancers and the Harvard University Ballet. She is also classically trained in piano.

“Ballet has shaped my entire life,” she said. “Being a dancer and choreographer helped me develop spatial perception, which is invaluable to a scientist.”

It was in college that Asaro discovered her love for science and math. While attending UCLA she read a chapter in quantum theory and states, “I struggled at first and at times thought I had no clue. Then one day it clicked and I was hooked.”

“There is a beauty in seeing a math problem come together just as there is in performing a ballet. The discipline it takes to do ballet well is similar to that needed to do math.”

She eventually became a full-time professor of physics, however, she left the classroom to focus full-time as a writer. She has continued to consult and teach part-time. Asaro’s background in physics plays an integral role in her writing. She incorporates space adventure, science and romance into her novels. The basis for some of the science in her fiction is based on research and scientific papers she has authored.

Asaro is the winner of numerous awards for her novels, most notably the Nebula Award, for her novel “The Quantum Rose,” which is awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Asaro holds a Ph.D. in chemical physics and a master’s in physics both from Harvard and a bachelor’s degree in physics with highest honors from UCLA.

Asaro currently resides in Columbia, Maryland, with her husband, John, an astrophysicist at NASA. They have one daughter who is a ballet dancer and studies math at Cambridge University in England.