Safi Bahcall is a second-generation physicist (the son of two astrophysicists), a biotech entrepreneur, and former public-company CEO.
He received his BA summa cum laude from Harvard and his PhD in physics from Stanford, where he worked with Lenny Susskind in particle physics (the science of the small) and the Nobel laureate Bob Laughlin in condensed matter physics (the science of the many). He was a Miller Fellow in physics at UC Berkeley (the school of the many).
After working for three years as a consultant for McKinsey, Safi co-founded a biotechnology company developing new drugs for cancer. He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years.
In 2008, he was named E&Y New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with President Obama’s council of science advisors (PCAST) on the future of national research.
Safi regularly speaks with leadership teams about applying the ideas in Loonshots (more here) and has presented at industry conferences, investor events, medical meetings, and leading academic institutions around the world.
Loonshots, Safi’s first book, has been translated into 18 languages; recommended by Bill Gates, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Pink, Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell, and Tim Ferriss; and selected as a best business book of the year by Amazon, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Financial Times, Forbes, Inc., Medium, Strategy + Business, Tech Crunch, and the Washington Post. It was the most recommended book of the year in Bloomberg’s annual survey of CEOs and entrepreneurs.
Safi lives with his wife, two children, and roughly 37 Gerald + Piggie books in Cambridge, MA.
