Portrait of Jim Al-Khalili

Half-length portrait of Jim Al-Khalili standing in the main piazza at the University of Surrey. In the background is a statue of Alan Turing FRS, by the artist John W. Mills.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey where he holds a Distinguished Chair in physics as well as a university chair in the public engagement in science. He received his PhD in nuclear reaction theory in 1989 and has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in the field. His current interest is in open quantum systems and the application of quantum mechanics in biology. In 2018, he helped establish at Surrey the world’s first doctoral training centre in quantum biology and, in 2020, set up a new Quantum Foundations Centre.

Jim is a prominent author and broadcaster. He has written 14 books, between them translated into twenty-six languages. He is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries and for the past nine years has hosted the award-winning weekly BBC Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific.

Jim is a past president of British Humanists Association (now Humanists UK) and a past president of the British Science Association. He is a trustee of the Institute of Physics and a member of the judging panel of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. He is a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. He received an OBE in 2007 for services to science.