It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Before the Big Bang

Before the Big Bang

Our Origins in the Multiverse

Summary

One of the world's most celebrated cosmologists presents her breakthrough explanation of our origins in the multiverse.

'Fascinating' ROGER PENROSE, Nobel laureate

'What if our universe is but an infinitesimal fragment of reality? What would this "multiverse" be like? There is no better guide to the bizarre, and sometimes paradoxical, cosmic super-realm than Laura Mersini-Houghton' Paul Davies, author of What's Eating the Universe?

In recent years, Laura Mersini-Houghton's ground-breaking theory, spectacularly vindicated with observational evidence, has turned the multiverse from philosophical speculation to one of the most compelling and credible explanations of our universe's origins. In Before the Big Bang, she interweaves the story of how she arrived at this theory with her journey from communist Albania, where she was born and brought up, to the West, showing how her unconventional path helped her to challenge orthodoxies and become one of the most courageous thinkers on the world stage of theoretical physics.

'A riveting tour of the cosmos from the one of the brightest minds in astrophysics' Washington Post

'A fascinating and unusual hybrid of pop science and memoir' 5*, Stephen Poole, Daily Telegraph

'One of the world's most renowned cosmologists offers insights into the majestic world of the quantum multiverse' Stephon Alexander, author of Fear of a Black Universe

*A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022*

Reviews

  • A fascinating account
    SIR ROGER PENROSE, Nobel laureate

About the author

Laura Mersini-Houghton

Laura Mersini-Houghton is an internationally renowned cosmologist and theoretical physicist and one of the world's leading experts on the multiverse and the origins of the universe. Born in Albania when it was still under a communist dictatorship, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States and is now a regular visiting professor at several universities around the world, including the University of Cambridge. She has been the subject of hundreds of articles in leading popular science magazines and has appeared in documentaries on the Science Channel, Discovery Channel and the BBC.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more