Jim Al-Khalili

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Jim Al-Khalili OBE BSc PhD
Jim Al-Khalili (cropped and shadow enhanced).jpg
Born Jameel Sadik Al-Khalili [1]
(1962-09-20) 20 September 1962 (age 50)[2]
Baghdad, Iraq
Residence United Kingdom
Citizenship United Kingdom
Fields Physics
Institutions University of Surrey
University College London
Alma mater University of Surrey (Ph.D.)
Thesis Intermediate Energy Deuteron Elastic Scattering from Nuclei in a Three-Body Model
Doctoral advisor Ronald C. Johnson [1]
Notable awards Order of the British Empire (2008)
Michael Faraday Prize (2007)
Kelvin Prize (2011)[3] Honorary Degree (DSc), University of London (2013)[4]
Spouse Julie Frampton[2]
Website
www.jimal-khalili.com
twitter.com/jimalkhalili
www2.surrey.ac.uk/physics/people/jim_al-khalili

Jim Al-Khalili OBE (born 20 September 1962) is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. He has hosted several BBC productions about science and is a frequent commentator about science in other British media. He currently presents the weekly radio 4 programme, "The Life Scientific", on BBC Radio Four.[5] Beginning in October 2011, it is broadcast every Tuesday morning for 24 weeks of the year.[6] He has been President of the British Humanist Association since January 2013.[7]

Contents

Early life and education [edit]

Born in Baghdad in 1962[2] to an Iraqi father and 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. Despite having a job lined up at the National Physical Laboratories, he stayed on at Surrey to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy degree in nuclear reaction theory, which he obtained in 1989.[8]

Career in physics [edit]

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 lecturer. In 1994, Al-Khalili was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellowship for five years,[9] during which time he established himself as a leading expert on mathematical models of exotic atomic nuclei. He has published widely in his field.[10][11][12][13][14][15]

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 (2009-2012) of the British Science Association.[16] He also held an EPSRC Senior Media Fellowship (2006-2011).[9]

Al-Khalili was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for science communication for 2007[17] 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.[18] In 2013 he was awarded an Honorary Degree (DSc) from the University of London.[19]

Science broadcasting [edit]

As a broadcaster, Al-Khalili is frequently on television and radio and also writes articles for the British press.[20] In 2004, he co-presented the Channel 4 documentary The Riddle of Einstein's Brain, produced by Icon Films.[21] 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.[22] 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.[23] 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. He has recently (as of October 2011) begun a programme on famous contemporary scientists on Radio Four, called "The Life Scientific". The first of these series featured his interview with Paul Nurse.[24]

In 2004 Al-Khalili was chosen as one of twenty-one "Faces of UK Science" on exhibition in London's National Portrait Gallery.[25]

In 2010, Al-Khalili presented a three-part BBC Four series called Chemistry: A Volatile History, on the history of chemistry and 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, 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.[26] 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. He made a brief appearance at the 16 December 2010 evening performance of "Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People" at London's Bloomsbury Theatre.

Al-Khalili also hosts a regular "Jim meets..." interview series at the University of Surrey, which is published on the university's YouTube channel.[27] Guests have included Sir David Attenborough, Lord Robert Winston, Prof. 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 History of Electricity.[28]

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. Later that same year he started presenting "The Life Scientific" on BBC Radio Four, a programme in which celebrated living scientists are interviewed. Beginning in October 2012 with Sir Paul Nurse as the guest.[29] 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 [edit]

Al-Khalili lives in Southsea with his wife Julie and has a son, Dave, and daughter, Kate, both at university. Al-Khalili has stated that, "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".[30] Al-Khalili has been a supporter of Leeds United football club since the Revie days of the early 1970s.

Published works [edit]

Author and co-author [edit]

Popular science books by Al-Khalili:

These have, between them, been translated into thirteen languages.

Editor [edit]

  • The Euroschool Lectures on Physics with Exotic Beams, Vol. I (Lecture Notes in Physics) (2004, ISBN 3-540-22399-1)
  • The Euroschool Lectures on Physics with Exotic Beams, Vol. II (Lecture Notes in Physics) (2006, ISBN 3-540-33786-5)
  • The Euroschool Lectures on Physics with Exotic Beams, Vol. III (Lecture Notes in Physics) (2008, ISBN 3-540-85838-5)

Consultant editor [edit]

Contributor [edit]

Research Papers [edit]

A list of Jim Al-Khalili’s peer reviewed research papers can be found on Google Scholar.

Television [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b Jim Al-Khalili at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ a b c "‘AL-KHALILI, Prof. Jameel S., (Jim)’, Who's Who 2013, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2013; online edn, Oxford University Presso". (subscription required)
  3. ^ Kelvin Medal
  4. ^ http://www.rhul.ac.uk/iquad/news/articles/hondegreesmarch13.aspx
  5. ^ Jim Al-Khalili at the Internet Movie Database
  6. ^ "BBC iPlayer - The Life Scientific". 
  7. ^ British Humanist Association, Jim Al-Khalili named President-elect of British Humanist Association, 14 December 2012. Retrieved 14 December 2012
  8. ^ Al-Khalili, Jameel (1989). Intermediate Energy Deuteron Elastic Scattering from Nuclei in a Three-Body Model (PhD thesis). University of Surrey. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1989PhDT........76A.
  9. ^ a b http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewPerson.aspx?PersonId=34109 Grants awarded to Jim Al-Khalili by the EPSRC
  10. ^ Al-Khalili, J.; Tostevin, J. (1998). "Few-body calculations of proton-6,8He scattering". Physical Review C 57 (4): 1846. doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.57.1846.  edit
  11. ^ Tostevin, J. A.; Al-Khalili, J. S. (1997). "How large are the halos of light nuclei?". Nuclear Physics A 616: 418. doi:10.1016/S0375-9474(97)00111-5.  edit
  12. ^ Al-Khalili, J.; Tostevin, J. (1996). "Matter Radii of Light Halo Nuclei". Physical Review Letters 76 (21): 3903–3906. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.3903. PMID 10061142.  edit
  13. ^ Al-Khalili, J.; Tostevin, J.; Thompson, I. (1996). "Radii of halo nuclei from cross section measurements". Physical Review C 54 (4): 1843. doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.54.1843.  edit
  14. ^ Johnson, R.; Al-Khalili, J.; Tostevin, J. A. (1997). "Elastic Scattering of Halo Nuclei". Physical Review Letters 79 (15): 2771. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.79.2771.  edit
  15. ^ List of scientific papers by Al-Khalili on Google Scholar
  16. ^ Council of the British Science Association
  17. ^ Press release from the Royal Society
  18. ^ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 58729. p. 9. 14 June 2008.
  19. ^ http://www.rhul.ac.uk/iquad/news/articles/hondegreesmarch13.aspx
  20. ^ http://www.journalisted.com/jim-alkhalili
  21. ^ Current and Past Productions of Icon Films.
  22. ^ Atom for BBC Four announcement.
  23. ^ Science and Islam for BBC Four
  24. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015n3b7#synopsis
  25. ^ Portrait page at the National Portrait Gallery
  26. ^ He has been a guest on the following In Our Time episodes: Rutherford, Higgs Boson, The Graviton, The Physics of Time, The Discovery of Radiation.
  27. ^ The University of Surrey's channel on YouTube
  28. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kjqcv
  29. ^ "BBC iPlayer - The Life Scientific:Paul Nurse". Retrieved 2012-05-10. 
  30. ^ It's time to herald the Arabic science that prefigured Darwin and Newton, The Guardian 30 January 2008, accessed 19 February 2010.

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