The first female theoretical physicist to gain tenure at Harvard, Lisa Randall is the proponent of a radical new cosmology that may overturn our old conceptions of time, space and the universe. The Standard Model of physics has proved highly accurate in predicting the relative strength of the known forces in verifiable ways, with one exception. The force of gravity appears inexplicably weak in relation to the other forces, such as electromagnetism. When a small magnet picks up a paper clip, it is overcoming the gravitational pull of the entire planet beneath it. After performing a mind-boggling series of calculations, Randall has proposed a solution to this riddle.

She has come to suspect that there’s a lot more gravity in the universe, but most of it is concentrated in a dimension that is hidden from us, one in which completely different rules govern the behavior of the elements. Randall suggests that our picture of the universe is distorted because we live in “a three-dimensional sinkhole.” She outlines these ideas for the general reader in her book, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions. She expresses her staggering ideas in remarkably clear colloquial language, replete with vivid images and pop culture references, including song lyrics by Björk and Eminem.

She was marked for greatness early; as a high school student, she won the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and attended the 1980 program of the Academy of Achievement as a student delegate. She continued to excel through college and graduate school, earning her Ph.D. at Harvard. She held professorships at MIT and Princeton before returning to Harvard as full professor in 2001. Even non-physicist friends knew she was entering the inner circle of the science when Stephen Hawking saved her a seat at his table during an international physics conference. Last year, Time magazine named her to its list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Experiments now underway may provide support for her ideas in the near future. NASA plans to test the theory with an array of Laser Interferometry Space Antennae, nicknamed—what else?— LISA.