Alexander Grau is a freelance author, publicist and science and culture journalist. He was born in Bonn on April 10, 1968.

After studying philosophy and German linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin, he received his doctorate in philosophy there in 1998. Until 2002, he conducted research on the rhetoric of imaging techniques in brain research with a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Research stays took him to the Institute for Medical Psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Since 2003, he has worked as a freelance author, publicist, and science and culture journalist for various media.

Grau publishes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Cicero, Schweizer Monat, Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ), Spiegel, Tagesspiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Focus, Brand eins, chrismon, Gehirn & Geist, and Tweed, among others. Scientifically, he dealt with identity and epistemology. He published books on religion, morality, cultural pessimism and political culture. His 2022 book, Alienated, is about human alienation between loss of reality and delusions of identity. His latest book on the philosophy of freedom will be published in May 2023.