Professor Jim Al-Khalili CBE FRS

Jim Al-Khalili is quantum physicist, author and broadcaster. As an academic, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Surrey. He received his PhD in nuclear physics in 1989 and has published over 150 papers in the field. His current research interests are in the foundations of quantu mechanics and the exciting new field of quantum biology.

As a science communicator Jim hosts BBC Radio 4’s long running show, The Life Scientific, which attracts two million weekly listeners. His many TV science documentaries over the past two decades include Atom, The Story of Electricity and the Bafta nominated Chemistry: a volatile history. His fifteen books on popular science and the history of science have been translated into twenty-six languages. He is currently working on an ambitious new book on the nature of time due out in Autumn 2026.

Jim is a past president of both the British Science Association and Humanists UK and is a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal and the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the Stephen Hawking medal and has ten honorary doctorates from UK universities. He received an OBE from the Queen in 2007 and later a CBE in 2021, both for ‘services to science and public engagement in STEM’. He is a trustee and commissioner on the board of the 1851 Royal Commission and a Fellow of the Science Museums Group.