Realising a dream to bring cosmology to a wider audience

While playing keyboard with top 1990s band D’Ream, he found time to obtain a first class degree and a PhD.

He has become one of Britain’s best known physicists. He’s one of the leaders of the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva, where scientists are recreating the conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, in the hope of revealing the simplicity of the universe.

“It’s a fascinating time to be in cosmology,’’ he said.

During his speech, Professor Cox highlighted the importance of the science-driven knowledge economy, which accounts for around 43 per cent of the country’s GVA (gross value added).

He also talked about the search for signs of life on Mars, which is being explored in “unprecedented detail”. Professor Cox closed by quoting one of his heroes, the Cornish chemist Sir Humphry Davy, an “evangelist for science” who said: “Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.”

VerdiCT: 8 /10: Ouch! My brain hurts! Somebody get me a physics PHD! He’s a brilliant speaker who has an infectious enthusiasm, and a deep-rooted love of his subject and the power of education. At times, I felt like I’d had a close encounter with the Hadron Collider itself, but the speech certainly must have made the audience want to dash out and watch his TV show, or read more of his work.