This book occupies a prominent place among the most important astrophysics books - if not the most important at all - especially those concerned with black holes.
The importance of this book has increased in recent years due to a number of important scientific events. Most of its prophecies regarding astronomy have come true, especially regarding the issue of black holes.
Kip Thorne (the book's author) and his research partners were able to observe gravitational waves for the first time in scientific history, which was considered a great scientific breakthrough.
Then later in 2019, scientists were able, through advanced engineering technology, to capture an image of the horizon of a black hole for the first time in history.
Thus, these and accompanying events culminated in a major effort by astrophysicists to understand and study general relativity and its predictions, such as gravitational waves and black holes.
Kip Thorne is one of the most prominent theoretical physicists, and has a long academic and scientific history, known for his friendship and fellowship with Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1965, and worked as a professor at a number of the world's most prestigious universities, before becoming the Richard Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009.
He won dozens of scientific awards, culminating in winning the Nobel Prize in Physics with Rainer Weiss and Barry Parish in 2017, "for their decisive contributions to the LIGO observatory and subsequently to the observation of gravitational waves."
