Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a respected member of the Women Studies department and an Assistant Physics professor at the University of New Hampshire. She was brought up in El Sereno, a neighborhood of East Los Angeles and is a proud fan of the Dodgers. She loves to refer to herself as the 54th Black woman to get a doctoral degree from a physics department in the United States. A descendant of Ashkenazi Jewish and Afro Caribbean immigrants, she is a citizen of both Barbados and the United States.

Prescod-Weinstein knew that she was going to become a theoretical physicist when she was just 19 years old. When she was seventeen, she left Los Angeles to attend Harvard from where she graduated in 2003 with a degree in Astronomy, Physics and Astrophysics. She then went to the University of California two years later, from where she earned her masters in Astrophysics and Astronomy and then began working on her doctoral degree. She then changed the direction of her research and in 2006 started working with Dr Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where she studied quantum gravity. Under the same institution, she would study Cosmic Acceleration to fulfill her doctoral degree requirements under Professor Niayesh Afshordi and Dr Smolin in 2010. She would then graduate with her PhD from the Department of Astronomy and Physics of the University of Waterloo in 2011.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is now a core member of the University of New Hampshire Gender Studies Department and also an assistant Professor of Physics. Between 2016 and 2018, she was a Research Associate at the University of Washington Department of Physics High Energy Theory Group. Previously, she was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Fellow under the Dr. Martin Luther King program. It was at the institution that she initially got an appointment to the MIT Kavli Institute of Space Research and Astrophysics under the Professor Ed Berschinger research group. She would later on join the Center for Theoretical Physics under Professor Alan Guth. Her first post doctoral assignment was at the Goddard Space Flight Center Observational Cosmology Lab, where she was a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow. During this time, she worked on the Nancy Roman Telescope studying the capacity for weak lensing.
Prescod-Weinstein work intersects astrophysics and particle physics and while she is for the most part a theoretical researcher, she still maintains strong ties with the people and the research in astronomy. She is still a topical convenor for conferences such as the “Dark Matter: Cosmic Probes.” She is also the NASA STROBE-X Probe Concept Study lead axion wrangler. Chanda uses concepts from both astronomy and physics and responds to questions regarding why the universe is as it is. She also does research on feminist science studies. She was named on the list of 10 people of “Nature’s 10” that helped shape science in 2020 and is also the Edward A Bouchet 2021 American Physical Society Award winner. Prescod-Weinstein was also recognized with an award for Excellent Research by the College of Physical Sciences and College of Engineering of the University of New Hampshire. She made the list of 15 Black Women Breaking Barriers and Paving the Way in STEM by “Essence Magazine.” Her ideas and personal story have been featured in the likes of “African American Intellectual History Society,” “Tech Crunch,” “Nylon,” “Huffington Post,” and “Gizmodo” among others. Her debut novel “The Disordered Cosmos” is a bestselling novel that analyzes cosmology and particle physics.

“The Disordered Cosmos” by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a journey into the world of the cosmos and particle physics by a star theoretical physicist. In the novel, Chanda shares her love for the Standard Model of Particle Physics in particular and physics in general. She also looks at the physics of melanin and the latest theories that have been propagated regarding dark matter informed by politics, history and the wisdom of Star Trek. As a preeminent physicist of her generation, Dr Prescod-Weinstein is one of the very few black american women that have broken barriers in managing to earn a doctoral degree from the department of physics of a major university. Her vision of the cosmos in grounded in Black feminist traditions, that are bouyantly non traditonal and vibrant. The author urges her readers to recognize that science is similar to most other disciplines in that it is rife with sexism, racism and other dehumanizing systems. “The Disordered Cosmos” brings into being a world that makes it possible for everyone to learn about the wonders of the cosmos.