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Brian Greene, in case you didn't know, is a professor of physics at Columbia and is the author of “The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory” and “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality.” For my money he's one of the top candidates to fill the "America's scientist" position left behind by Carl Sagan. His popular books on string theory are remarkable in their ability to translate incredibly complex, and still-changing, scientific thought into language a "civilian" can understand.

Anyway, if you're not the type to watch the times' op-ed pages, here's a taste of his piece published today:

A COUPLE of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.

But it’s not. Rather, it speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier’s letter emphasized something I’ve increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives.

Allow me a moment to explain.

Read the rest @ Put a Little Science in Your Life