While studying at the University of California at Berkeley, he adopted his mother's surname Tegmark, as there were many astronomers named Shapiro, including one of his professors. While in high school, Tegmark and a friend, Magnus Bodin, created and sold a word processor, Teddy, written in machine code for the Swedish eight-bit computer ABC 80 as a summer project, which was marketed "in a very modest manner" by Liber Läromedel, and—per Tegman's autobiographical description—he also coded a 3D Tetris-like game called Frac.:p.55
Tegmark has worked on precision cosmology, which combines "theoretical work with new measurements to place sharp constraints on cosmological models and their free parameters". He has developed data analysis tools based on information theory and applied them to cosmic microwave background experiments such as COBE, QMAP, and WMAP, and to galaxy redshift surveys such as the Las Campanas Redshift Survey, the 2dF Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Tegmark led a research project at MIT, beginning in 2020, focused on the application of machine learning to the classification of news reports. They called the AI-driven news aggregator "Improving the News". To maintain and scale the work, Tegmark and his wife and colleague Meia Chita-Tegmark founded the eponymous Improve the News Foundation (ITN) as an "apolitical" 501(c)(3) nonprofit in October 2020, with the stated mission to help "readers rise above controversies and understand the world in a nuanced way." The ITN product was rebranded as "Verity News" in 2023.
Machine learning
In the 2010s, after having focused on cosmology and quantum information for around 25 years, Tegmark's research started to focus on machine learning and AI safety. He has worked at MIT on how to use AI in physics and how to improve AI using insights from physics. In 2024, he co-authored a paper introducing Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), which differ fundamentally from the neural networks typically used in machine learning and are designed to be more interpretable. KANs are based on the Kolmogorov–Arnold representation theorem, which was previously thought to be irrelevant to machine learning.
Under Tegmark's founding leadership, the Future of Life Institute has pursued a stated mission to "steer transformative technologies away from extreme, large-scale risks and towards benefiting life". It is focused on research aiming to mitigate large-scale risks for humanity, particularly those related to advanced AI. A co-founding faculty member was University of California, Santa Cruz professor Anthony Aguirre, now Executive Director of the organization. Its board-level leadership has included Elon Musk, Skype and Kazaa founder Jaan Tallinn, as well as actors (Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman), and individual graduate students (including his wife, Meia Chita-Tegmark, then a Boston University PhD student). Tegmark and the organization are academic proponents of approaches and views that are aware of and wrestle with the potential risks associated with the development of AI. It received a cryptocurrency donation of $665 million donation from Vitalik Buterin in 2021, as well as a $10 million donation from Elon Musk in 2015 and additional funding by board member and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.
In 2023, Tegmark was the focus of a controversy when he was alleged to have signed a letter of intent on behalf of the Future of Life Institute for a $100,000 grant—ultimately rejected—to far-right media outlet Nya Dagbladet, an outlet for which Tegmark's brother wrote, an allegation to which the Institute formally responded. Tegmark later said that the Institute "ultimately decided to reject it because of what our subsequent due diligence uncovered", that they rejected it long before the media became involved, and that the institute "finds Nazi, neo-Nazi or pro-Nazi groups or ideologies despicable and would never knowingly support them". An official statement from the Future of Life Institute further expands on this: "FLI finds groups or ideologies espousing antisemitism, white supremacy, or racism despicable and would never knowingly support any such group".
Awards and recognition
Tegmark was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 for, according to the citation, "his contributions to cosmology, including precision measurements from cosmic microwave background and galaxy clustering data, tests of inflation and gravitation theories, and the development of a new technology for low-frequency radio interferometry".
He was awarded the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science's Gold Medal in 2019 for, according to the citation, "his contributions to our understanding of humanity's place in the cosmos and the opportunities and risks associated with artificial intelligence. He has courageously tackled these existential questions in his research and, in a commendable way, succeeded in communicating the issues to a wider public."
In 2023, Time named Tegmark one of the 100 most influential people in AI.
In 2006, Tegmark was one of fifty scientists interviewed by New Scientist about their predictions for the future. His prediction: "In 50 years, you may be able to buy T-shirts on which are printed equations describing the unified laws of our universes."
Tegmark also appears in "Who's Afraid of a Big Black Hole?", "What Time is It?", "To Infinity and Beyond", "Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?", "What is Reality?" and "Which Universe Are We In?", all part of the BBC's Horizon scientific series of programmes.
He appears in several episodes of Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, an American documentary television series on science which first aired in the United States on December 1, 2009. The series is hosted by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.
In 2014, "The Perpetual Earth Program," a play based on Tegmark's book Our Mathematical Universe, was mounted in New York City as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festival.
In 2017, Tegmark gave a talk entitled "Effective altruism, existential risk & existential hope" at the world's largest annual conference of the effective altruism movement.
In 2018, Tegmark took part in a conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman about Artificial General Intelligence as part of a MIT course on AGI. He was the first guest on the Lex Fridman podcast. He was interviewed again on the Lex Fridman podcast in 2021 and in 2023.
In 2024, Tegmark was featured in Business Insider in an article called "Trump sees China as the biggest AI threat. He has bipartisan support to win the race for powerful human-like AI", which discussed the geopolitical race toward artificial general intelligence.
In 2025, Tegmark was featured in the Financial Times in an article entitled "Big Tech pushes for 10-year ban on US states regulating AI", which examined efforts by technology companies to limit state-level AI regulation.
In 2025, Tegmark was interviewed by CNN in a segment called "This expert predicts superintelligence could make 'everybody economically obsolete'", where he discussed the economic implications of advanced AI systems.
In 2025, Tegmark was featured in a Forbes article titled "Calculating The Risk Of ASI Starts With Human Minds", which discussed frameworks for assessing the risks of artificial superintelligence.
In 2025, Tegmark appeared on MSNBC in a segment alongside actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt discussing the threat of AI superintelligence.
In 2025, Tegmark participated in a conversation with Yuval Noah Harari on Bloomberg Live, which was titled "Harari and Tegmark on Humanity and AI". In the conversation, they discussed the future of human civilization in the age of artificial intelligence.
In 2026, Tegmark was featured in TIME magazine's cover story entitled "The People Vs. AI", which examined growing public resistance to unchecked AI development.
In 2026, Tegmark was featured in Bloomberg in "Prince Harry, Geoffrey Hinton Call for Ban on AI Superintelligence", which covered a landmark petition signed by prominent public figures calling for a halt to superintelligence development.
Personal life
Tegmark married astrophysicist Angelica de Oliveira-Costa in 1997, and divorced in 2009. They have two sons. On August 5, 2012, Tegmark married Meia Chita, with whom he has one son.
12Bodin, Magnus (21 July 2011). "Teddy—1984". x42.com (personal website of Magnus Bodin). self-published. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2023.[bettersourceneeded]
123Tegmark, Max (2014). Our Mathematical Universe. Knopf.
12Strong, Rebecca (15 January 2015). "3 Things to Know About the Elon Musk-Backed Future of Life Institute". BostInno (bostinno.streetwise.co). Boston, MA: Streetwise Media. Archived from the original on 2 July 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2025. Now, Musk is serving on the scientific advisory board at the... Institute and has also donated $10 million to the organization... [stating in a quoted X post that he was] 'Funding research on artificial intelligence safety...'. / 'Hopefully this grant program will help shift our focus from building things just because we can, toward building things because they are good for us in the long term,' said institute co-founder Meia Chita-Tegmark on the group's website. / The organization was founded by MIT physics professor Max Tegmark, along with UC Santa Cruz professor Anthony Aguirre. The pair also founded the Foundational Questions Institute, a research organization that explores the foundations of physics and cosmology. / Other key people with the... Institute include Jaan Tallinn, a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa...; Boston University PhD candidate Meia Chita-Tegmark; and Harvard University PhD candidate Viktoriya Krakovna. / Two... actors serve on the advisory board: Morgan Freeman and Alan Alda.
↑FoLI Staff (8 December 2025). "About Us—Our Mission". Future of Life Institute. Retrieved 8 December 2025. The Future of Life Institute's mission is to steer transformative technologies away from extreme, large-scale risks and towards benefiting life. Note, as of that date, Max Tegmark was the President of FoLI.
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