# Max Tegmark

Founder and Chair, Future of Life Institute. TIME100 AI 2026, Shapers. An MIT physicist whose nonprofit grades AI companies on safety; the top score on its index this summer was a C+. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-tegmark/))

- Born: 1967-05-05, Stockholm, Sweden ([physics.mit.edu](https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/), [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark))
- Education: PhD, Physics, UC Berkeley, 1994; MA, Physics, UC Berkeley, 1992; MSE, Engineering physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 1990; BA, Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, 1989 ([physics.mit.edu](https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/))
- Career: Future of Life Institute (Co-founder and President, 2014 to now); MIT (Professor of Physics, 2004 to now); University of Pennsylvania (Assistant Professor, until 2004); Max Planck Institute for Physics (Research associate) ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Life_Institute), [time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-tegmark/), [physics.mit.edu](https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/))
- TIME profile: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-tegmark/
- Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/most-influential-people-in-ai/max-tegmark

- Earned an economics degree from the Stockholm School of Economics before switching to physics. ([physics.mit.edu](https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/))
- Spent most of his career as a cosmologist mapping the universe before turning his MIT research to AI interpretability and provably safe AI. ([physics.mit.edu](https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/))
- His institute's 2023 open letter asking labs to pause AI more powerful than GPT-4 drew a long list of high-profile signatories. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-tegmark/))
- FLI grades AI labs on safety; the best score in its summer 2026 AI Safety Index was a C+, earned by Anthropic. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-tegmark/))
- Says he saw more shift in U.S. AI policymaking in three months of 2026 than in the previous decade. ([time.com](https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-tegmark/))
- Wrote two New York Times bestsellers, Life 3.0 on AI and Our Mathematical Universe on physics. ([cser.ac.uk](https://www.cser.ac.uk/work/16-september-2026-a-better-path-for-ai-with-max-tegmark/))