Mark Alpert is an American author of thriller novels, who is also well-known for his work as a contributing editor at Scientific American. Alpert has a special ability to explain complex scientific ideas to readers, making esoteric concepts like parallel universes and extra dimensions easy to understand. He weaves such scientific ideas into his thriller novels, elucidating real technologies and theories. Alpert is a lifelong science geek who has a deep passion for astrophysics. He obtained his major in astrophysics from Princeton University and wrote his undergraduate thesis on the application of the theory of relativity to a hypothetical universe having only 2 spatial dimensions, which was published in the General Relativity & Gravitation Journal.
After graduating from Princeton, Alpert entered the creative writing program at Columbia University, where he earned an MFA in poetry in 1984. He began his journalism career as a small-town reporter at the Claremont Eagle Times and later switched to work for the Montgomery Advertiser. In 1987, he became a reporter for Fortune Magazine, where he wrote about the computer industry and emerging technologies. During the 1990s, Alpert worked freelance, contributing articles to Popular Mechanics and writing anchor copy for CNN's Moneyline show. He also began to write fiction, selling his first short story, "My Life with Joanne Christiansen," to Playboy in 1991. In 1998, Alpert joined the board of editors at Scientific American, where he edited feature articles for the magazine and wrote a column on exotic high-tech gadgets. This reawakened his love for science, and he wrote his first novel, Final Theory, about Albert Einstein and the historic quest for the holy grail of physics, the Theory of Everything. The novel was published in 2008 and was hailed as one of the best thrillers of the year by Booklist, Borders, and the American Booksellers Association. The movie rights for the novel were acquired by Radar Pictures, a Los Angeles production company.