Nancy Ellen Abrams

Nancy Ellen Abrams is a philosopher of science and lawyer and the co-author, with cosmologist Joel R. Primack, of two books that interpret the place of humans in the new universe picture:The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos (2006) and The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World (2011). She and Primack have given over 100 talks about this work and won the Chopra Foundation's "Spirit of Rustum Roy Award" in 2012. Her newest book,A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet (2015), rethinks the concept of God in light of modern science and won the 2015 USA Best Book Award in philosophy. As a lawyer and former Fulbright Scholar she has worked for the International Juridical Association in Rome (a European environmental law think tank), the Ford Foundation, and the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress. She is also a singer/songwriter who has performed in nineteen countries, released three albums, and been featured on National Public Radio and television. Intrigued by science’s border with myth since studying with Mircea Eliade at the University of Chicago, she works as a scholar to put the discoveries of modern cosmology into a cultural context and as an artist to express their implications at a deeper level. She and Primack are married and live in Santa Cruz, CA. They have a daughter, Samara Bay (ladialectcoach.com).