Jim Al Khalili

Early life and education

Born in Baghdad in 1962 to an Iraqi father and an English mother, Al-Khalili settled permanently in the UK in 1979. After completing his A-levels in 1982, he studied physics at the University of Surrey and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1986. He stayed on at Surrey to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy degree in nuclear reaction theory, which he obtained in 1989, rather than accepting a job offer from the National Physical Laboratory.

Career in physics

In 1989, Al-Khalili was awarded a Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) postdoctoral fellowship at University College London, after which he returned to Surrey in 1991, first as a research assistant, then as a lecturer. In 1994, Al-Khalili was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellowship for five years, during which time he established himself as a leading expert on mathematical models of exotic atomic nuclei. He has published widely in his field.

Al-Khalili is now a professor of physics at the University of Surrey, where he also holds a chair in the Public Engagement in Science. He has been a Trustee (2006-2012) and Vice President (2008-2011) of the British Science Association. He also held an EPSRC Senior Media Fellowship.

Al-Khalili was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for science communication for 2007 and elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Physics since 2000, when he also received the Institute's Public Awareness of Physics Award. He has lectured widely both in the UK and around the world, particularly for the British Council. He is currently a member of the British Council Science and Engineering Advisory Group, a member of the Royal Society Equality and Diversity Panel, an external examiner for the Open University Department of Physics and Astronomy, a member of the Editorial Board for the open access Journal PMC Physics A, and Associate Editor of Advanced Science Letters. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee for the Cheltenham Science Festival.

In 2007, he was a judge on the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction and has been a celebrity judge at the National Science & Engineering Competition Finals at The Big Bang Fair. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. In 2013 he was awarded an Honorary Degree (DSc) from the University of London.

Science broadcasting

As a broadcaster, Al-Khalili is frequently on television and radio and also writes articles for the British press. In 2004, he co-presented the Channel 4 documentary The Riddle of Einstein's Brain, produced by Icon Films. His big break as a presenter came in 2007 with Atom, a three-part series on BBC Four about the history of our understanding of the atom and atomic physics. This was followed by a special archive edition of BBC Horizon, The Big Bang.

In early 2009, he presented the BBC Four three-part series Science and Islam about the leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries. He has contributed to programmes ranging from Tomorrow's World, BBC Four's Mind Games, The South Bank Show to BBC One's Bang Goes the Theory. In October 2011, he began a programme on famous contemporary scientists on Radio Four, called The Life Scientific. The first of this series featured his interview with Sir Paul Nurse.

In 2004, Al-Khalili was chosen as one of twenty-one "Faces of UK Science" for an exhibition in London's National Portrait Gallery.

In 2010, Al-Khalili presented a feature on the Doctor Who DVD of The Time Monster, entitled Between Now... and Now!, discussing the science behind time travel in that particular story. He presented a three-part BBC Four series on the history of chemistry called Chemistry: A Volatile History, which was nominated for a BAFTA award, as well as a documentary on chaos theory called The Secret Life of Chaos. He is also one of several presenters on Genius of Britain, a five-part series for Channel 4 shown in 2010, along with Prof. Stephen Hawking, Prof. Richard Dawkins, Sir James Dyson and Sir David Attenborough.

Al-Khalili is a regular guest on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, presented by Melvyn Bragg. He has been a guest on Start The Week and the Today programme. In April, 2009, he presented a three-part series called The Secret Scientists for the BBC World Service. He was the Desert Island Discs guest on 14 February 2010.

Al-Khalili also hosts a regular "Jim meets..." interview series at the University of Surrey, which is published on the university's YouTube channel. Guests have included Sir David Attenborough, Lord (Robert) Winston, Professor Brian Cox and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 2011, Al-Khalili hosted a three-part documentary series on BBC Four entitled Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity.

In January 2012, Al-Khalili presented a Horizon special on BBC 2, which examined the latest scientific developments in the quest to discover the Higgs Boson, with preliminary results from the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN suggesting that the elusive particle does indeed exist. In October that same year, he started presenting The Life Scientific on BBC Radio Four, a programme in which celebrated living scientists are interviewed; the first was Sir Paul Nurse. He has since interviewed a series of notable scientists, including Richard Dawkins, James Lovelock, Steven Pinker, Martin Rees, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Mark Walport and Tim Hunt.

Personal life

Al-Khalili lives in Southsea in Portsmouth with his wife Julie. They have a son and daughter. Al-Khalili describes himself as an atheist, remarking, "as the son of a Protestant Christian mother and a Shia Muslim father, I have nevertheless ended up without a religious bone in my body". Al-Khalili has been a supporter of Leeds United football club since the Revie days of the early 1970s.

Awards and honours

Television

Al-Khalili has presented the following TV programmes.