Eric Chaisson

Eric Chaisson is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics best known for developing the interdisciplinary science of cosmic evolution — a unified account of complexity from the Big Bang through galaxies, stars, planets, life, and culture. His signature contribution is the concept of energy rate density as a single thermodynamic metric for comparing the rise of complexity across all natural systems, explored in his award-winning books Cosmic Dawn and Cosmic Evolution.