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Born in Logan, Utah in 1940, Kip Thorne received his B.S. degree from Caltech in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965. He returned to Caltech as an Associate professor in 1967 and became Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1970, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor in 1981, and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1991. Thorne's research has focused on gravitation physics and astrophysics, with emphasis on black holes and gravitational waves. He was cofounder (with R. Weiss and R.W.P. Drever) of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project. Thorne was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. He has been awarded the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society (1996), the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society (1996), the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in Physics and Astronomy (1969 and 1994) and the Phi Beta Kappa Science Writing Award (1994). He has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Danforth Foundation Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow, and has served on the International Committee on General Relativity and Gravitation, the Committee on US-USSR Cooperation in Physics, and the National Academy of Science's Space Science Board.