The Beauty of Falling Claudia de Rham

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A brilliant physicist traces the trajectory of her tumultuous life in science, giving readers an intimate, playful picture of gravity while sharing her cutting-edge research that may finally move physics beyond general relativity.

We all know what gravity feels like. A pilot in flight, a diver underwater, or an astronaut floating in outer space are all interacting with gravity in one way or another. But we don’t need to go that far to play with gravity – when we throw a ball, swing in a hammock, or send a stone skipping along the surface of a pond, we’re all carrying out our own personal experiments with gravity. Yet the brightest minds in history have yet to answer the simple question: what exactly is gravity?

The physicist Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity for her entire life. She has been a diver, a pilot, and even came within a hair’s breadth of being a European Space Agency astronaut as well. In THE BEAUTY OF FALLING, she builds the most intimate, vivid portrait of gravity we have so far, beginning with Isaac Newton’s theories and proceeding through Galileo and Einstein to contemporary researchers such as the Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist Andrea Ghez. De Rham closes by bringing readers to a new gravitational frontier: a look at the theory of ‘massive gravity’ that she and her colleagues have uncovered, a theory that could help unravel some of the mysteries of our universe – including the enigma of dark energy – in a way that until now has been considered impossible.

In THE BEAUTY OF FALLING, de Rham celebrates the beauty of what we know about gravity, delves into the mysteries it continues to hide, and takes a peek at future missions that will provide new pieces of the puzzle. At the same time, she tells her own story, giving readers a window into the world of science today – the doubt and failure, yes, but also the incredible thrill of discovery – in a way that can inspire people from all backgrounds to fully appreciate our mysterious, playful, gravitydriven universe.

CLAUDIA DE RHAM is a professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London, a 2020 Simons Investigator in Physics, a 2020 Blavatnik Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering, and winner of the 2018 Adams Prize for contributions to mathematics. In 2008, she was one of the final 42 candidates for the European Space Agency’s astronaut selection campaign, before a surprise diagnosis of latent tuberculosis derailed her chances. From there, she moved into academia, researching gravity, particle physics and cosmology, in pursuit of a more fundamental description of the nature of our universe. In 2011, she and her colleagues gained worldwide attention by publishing a theory of massive gravity that has the potential to solve some of cosmology’s biggest mysteries.

Publisher: Princeton University Press Delivery: Spring 2022 Publication: Spring 2023 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 60,000 words

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