Professor Jim Al-Khalili CBE HonFREng FRS

Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in Public Engagement in Science, University of Surrey

Professor Jim Al-Khalili is a well-known author, broadcaster and science communicator. He received his PhD in theoretical nuclear physics in 1989 and has published widely on few-body quantum scattering methods to study nuclear structure, particularly as applied to the study of exotic nuclei. He has more recently focussed on the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum thermodynamics and quantum effects in biology.

He currently leads an international interdisciplinary research collaboration on the arrow of time in quantum mechanics and heads up the Quantum Foundations and technologies Research Group in the School of Mathematics and Computing. He is course director of the MSc programme in applied quantum computing.

Jim is a prominent author and broadcaster and has written 15 books on popular science and the history of science, between them translated into 26 languages. He is a regular presenter on TV and hosts the long-running weekly BBC Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific.

He is a past president of the British Science Association and a recipient of the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday and Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medals, the Institute of Physics Kelvin medal and the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. He recently served as the only non-engineer judge for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and is a commissioner on the board of the 1851 Royal Commission.