Demetris Nicolaides

LONGER BIO: Demetris Nicolaides is a theoretical physicist and an author.

He finished college in three and a half years, cum laude, with a double major, in physics and mathematics, and a master's in physics. He continued his studies to earn a second master and a Ph.D. in physics from the City University of New York.

He graduated first in his physics class and received the Paul Klapper Physics Award for "the outstanding physics major." He was also given an Award for Honors in Physics and an Award for Honors in Mathematics "in recognition for superior scholarship."

Dr. Nicolaides loves teaching and is grateful to his students whose thirst for knowledge keeps him improving. In the fall of 2023, he began teaching physics at the Department of Science & Engineering at Raritan Valley Community College. Before that, he was a professor of physics at the Division of Natural Science and Mathematics at Bloomfield College where he taught physics and astronomy. In May 2023, Bloomfield College honored Dr. Nicolaides with the title of Professor Emeritus.

His interests include science, and the history and philosophy of science. His scientific research covers a range of diverse interdisciplinary topics. In physics he investigates critical phenomena, eventful processes during which the strife between dull conformity and catastrophic chaos creates a mellifluous harmony—a state of perfect fractal universality and cooperative connectivity between all of a system’s component parts. In observational astronomy he measures the properties of pulsating variables—stars, light years away, whose brightness varies periodically as they expand and contract (as a person's chest does in breathing). In the philosophy of physics (and of science in general) he analyzes the foundational laws of physics from a philosophical perspective in hopes of determining if such laws are really "true" or merely practical. He is also interested in the historical evolution of ideas: how, for example, natural philosophy gradually developed into the field of modern physics.

He believes that all things in nature, even the apparently different, share a subtle universal commonality which he strives to find and understand. He likes the journey more than the destination and doesn't mind getting lost now and then.

Professor Nicolaides is an author, he has published scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has presented his research at conferences nationally and internationally. His newest book, In Search of a Theory of Everything, is a new kind of sight, a philosophical insight of modern physics, on a quest for the theory that will ultimately explain all the phenomena of nature via a single immutable overarching law. It became an academic best seller and it was also named one of the best philosophy of physics books of all time. His book, In the Light of Science—a Library Journal best seller—is an accessible presentation of the history of science and of science itself.

He is a member of the American Physical Society (a physics group), the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (an astronomy group), and the International Association for Presocratic Studies (a philosophy group).