[6] His father, Alan Greene, was a one-time vaudeville performer and high school dropout who later worked as a voice coach and composer.
He received a Doctor of Philosophy in 1987 with a thesis entitled "Superstrings: topology, geometry and phenomenology and astrophysical implications of supersymmetric models".
[19] Currently, Greene is studying non-simply connected and non-orientable compactifications and has showed that in some of these contexts, signals can have an effective speed greater than that of light, and even travel back in time.
[34] Greene worked with by composer Philip Glass, playwright David Henry Hwang, filmmakers AL and AL, and executive producer Tracy Day to adapt Greene’s novella Icarus at the Edge of Time, which is a futuristic re-telling of the Icarus myth, into a stage work for full orchestra, film, and narrator.
The work premiered on June 6, 2010 at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, with narrator John Lithgow, as part of World Science Festival.
[35] Greene wrote the stage work Light Falls: Space, Time, and an Obsession of Einstein, which traces Albert Einstein’s discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and his subsequent failed attempts to find what he called “the unified theory.” The original score was written by Jeff Beal and visuals and stage production were created by 59 Productions, with executive producer Tracy Day.
The work premiered on February 19, 2019 at the Gerald Lynch Theater in New York City,[36] with Greene in the role of narrator, and was filmed by Great Performances for national broadcast on PBS on the centenary of the confirmation of General Relativity, May 29, 2019.
[37] Greene wrote the stage work Time, Creativity and the Cosmos, exploring the origin of the universe, life, and creative expression, which premiered on May 30, 2017 at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, with Greene in the role of narrator and performers Pilobolus, Joshua Bell, Renee Fleming, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and David Draiman.
[38] In 2008, together with former ABC News producer Tracy Day, Greene co-founded the World Science Festival[39][40][41][42] as a forum for cultivating “a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.”[43] Since its founding, the World Science Festival has produced more than a thousand live and digital programs on subjects including cosmology, astronomy, quantum mechanics, particle physics, black holes, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, consciousness, quantum biology, genius, creativity, astrobiology, extrasolar planets, psychedelics.
[45] The popularity of his books and his natural on-camera demeanor have resulted in many media appearances, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,[46][47][48][49] Good Morning America,[50] CNN,[51] ABC News,[52] CBS News,[53] The History Channel, Conan, The Science Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Colbert Report,[54] Charlie Rose,[55] The Art Bell Show,[56] Coast to Coast AM,[57] BBC World News America, Late Show with David Letterman,[58] Radiolab,[59] and The Joe Rogan Experience.
[61] In April 2011, Greene appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory in the episode "The Herb Garden Germination", speaking to a small crowd about the contents of his most recent book.
[79][80][81] Greene has stated that he regards science as being incompatible with literalist interpretations of religion and that there is much in the New Atheism movement which resonates with him because he personally does not feel the need for religious explanation.