Stephon Alexander, a physics professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has been elected president of the National Society of Black Physicists, the country’s pre-eminent organization devoted to the African American physics community.
Dr. Alexander has been a faculty member at Brown University since 2016. In addition to teaching, he is also the co-director of Brown’s Presidential Scholars Program, which recruits, supports, and provides research opportunities for low-income and underrepresented students. His academic research focuses on the interface between cosmology and particle physics.
Additionally, Dr. Alexander is an accomplished jazz musician and author of The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe (Basic Books, 2016), which explores the connections between theoretical physics and musical improvisation. He also served as a science advisor to the film, A Wrinkle in Time, which premiered early this year.
Dr. Alexander first joined the National Society of Black Physicists in 1990 during his first-year as an undergraduate student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he was the only Black physics student at the time. “NSBP provided a community of scientists that shared similar experiences and a passion for physics, so I didn’t feel as alone in my quest to become a physicist,” Dr. Alexander said. “I never would have dreamt when I joined that I would one day have the opportunity to give back to NSBP serving as its president.”
Dr. Alexander is a graduate of Haverford College where he majored in physics. He also holds a master’s degree in physics, a master’s degree in electrical engineering, and a Ph.D. in physics all from Brown University.
