At the age of ten, Ron Mallett's father died. Suffocating beneath the weight of his grief, young Ron picked up a copy of H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" and was inspired to throw himself into a quest to find his own Holy Grail - a means to travel back in time and save his father from his untimely death. Remarkably, this working-class boy from the Bronx stuck with his vision, struggling with poverty and prejudice to become one of America's first black Ph.D.s in theoretical physics. Ronald Mallett discovered that circulating laser light could twist not just space (a phenomenon known as frame dragging) but also time, thus creating a time loop through which subatomic particles, information and perhaps one day even people might travel. "The Time Traveller" follows Ronald Mallett's extraordinary journey of self - and scientific discovery as he describes in simple language and elegant metaphor the physics that makes time travel possible. From Einstein's seminal work in relativity, to closed loops in time, to black holes and the birth of the universe, Ron Mallett lays out his theories and presents the reader with what is an actual blueprint for a time machine. A dramatic and compellingly human memoir, this is also a story of astonishing achievement. An experimental machine to travel back in time is now being designed at a university laboratory using Dr Mallett's theories and equations.