Keith Alison Olive is a theoretical physicist, and director at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, specializing in particle physics and cosmology.
His main topics of research are: big bang nucleosynthesis, which is an explanation of the origin of the light element isotopes through 7Li; particle dark matter; big bang baryogenesis, which is an explanation of the matter-antimatter asymmetry observed in nature; and inflation which is a theory constructed to resolve many outstanding problems in standard cosmology.
[1] Olive received in 1978 a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a master's degree in physics in the same year and in 1981 a PhD in physics.
Olive was the 2018 Hans A. Bethe Prize Recipient;[2] elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003; [1][3] awarded the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award for the years 1987–1994;[4][1] elected University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight Professor 1998–present;[5][1] and granted the George W. Taylor Award for distinguished Research in 1988 by the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota.
[6] He is one of the editors of a book, Inner Space/Outer Space,[7][8] The University of Chicago Press (1986) and a number of journal articles.