Broadway can't get enough eggheads. First came the physicists of Copenhagen, which won the best play Tony in 2000. Then the mathematicians of Proof, which won the Tony in 2001 (competing against The Invention of Love, a play about classics scholars).

Now, Alan Alda will star as Nobel Prize-winning professor of physics Richard Feynman in Peter Parnell's QED at Lincoln Center this fall. The drama will run on Sundays and Monday at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre beginning Sept. 30. Official opening is Oct. 22 for a run through Dec. 17. Gordon Davidson will direct. The Parnell work adds a new play to a Broadway fall season all but bereft of that species.

QED was once called Tuva or Bust! and is based on the book that goes by the latter title, written by Feynman and Ralph Leighton. Tuva traces the two men's friendship from the first discovery of a mutual passion for drumming to Feynman's many wild tales of safe cracking at Los Alamos, sharing gambling tips with Nick the Greek, joking with Einstein and finding the frozen "O Rings," the cause of the Challenger disaster.

The show played the Mark Taper Forum in spring 2001. A second role is yet to be cast.

Alda last appeared on Broadway in Yasmina Reza's Art.