Anesthesiologist · Quantum consciousness theorist & researcher

Stuart Hameroff, MD

A clinical anesthesiologist and researcher on how the brain produces consciousness — and how anesthetics act to erase it.

In the mid-1990s he teamed with Sir Roger Penrose to develop the controversial Orch OR theory, in which consciousness arises from “orchestrated” quantum vibrations in microtubules, tied to the fine-scale structure of spacetime through Penrose’s “objective reduction.”

Emeritus professor at the University of Arizona and director of its Center for Consciousness Studies; founder of The Science of Consciousness, the longest-running interdisciplinary conference on consciousness, convened since 1994.