About Me

Roger Highfield was born in Wales, raised in north London and became the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. He has written half a dozen books, sat on a few committees and was the science editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades. Today, he is the Editor of New Scientist. Here is the full, boring, version of his life...

Born 1958 in Wales

Live in Greenwich, London, with my wife and two children.

Here is a recent interview with null hypothesis.

Find me on Who's Who.

Find out what inspired me.

Find out about my education.

The spoof Telegraph front page that marked my departure after 22 years.

Education

Christ's Hospital, Horsham (69-76) MA (chemistry, 76-80, Oxford University) and Dphil (neutron scattering from thin films, 80-83), Oxford University, also working at Unilever, Southampton University and Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble, France. Research on specular reflection of neutrons (supervisor Dr R K Thomas FRS).

Fellowships/scholarships

Domus Scholarship, Pembroke College Oxford (1977); Visiting Sabbatical Fellow, Balliol College, Trinity 1994, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, Trinity 1989.

Journalism

Clinical reporter on Pulse, magazine for general practitioners (83-84); news editor of Nuclear Engineering International (84-86).

Joined The Daily Telegraph in 1986 as Technology Correspondent. Technology Editor in 1987. Became Science Editor in 1988.

Became Editor of New Scientist in 2008.

Freelance

1980s, for Economist, Guardian, New Scientist, Sunday Times and Observer. Esquire columnist in 1993 and Esquire science editor 1996-98. Columnist for High Life. Since then, also written for The Spectator, Conde Nast Traveler and Science.

Broadcasting

Regular contributions to BBC radio, notably Scope, Acid Test, Science Now and Leading Edge.

Awards

Winner and runner up/shortlisted in various awards including the British Press Awards; Medical Journalists Association; Association of British Science Writers. Shortlisted, New Consumer Editor of the year, BSME Awards.

Lectures

Cambridge and Cheltenham Science Festivals. Tribeca Film Festival, New York. QM2. Royal Institution. Royal Society. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Cheltenham, Oxford and Edinburgh Book Festivals. Festival della Scienza, Genoa. Various discussions, including at the Royal Society and 10 Downing Street.

Pro Bono

• I sit on the Science and the Media expert group
• Member of the Advisory Committee for the Science Museum, London.
• Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering's Communications and Public Engagement Committee.
• Former Member of HPA's Health Protection and Society Advisory Group.
• Former Member of the Bioscience Futures Forum.
• Former member of the Royal Society Science in Society Committee.
• Former member of the the Advisory Council for Chemistry, Oxford University, and British Association for the Advancement of Science public affairs committee 1987-1993.
• Former member of the Royal Society/British Association/Royal Institution Committee on the Public Understanding of Science.
• Advisor to the Cheltenham Science Festival, FameLab and Imperial College science communication course.
• Established Visions of Science and science writer competitions and helped to organise LiveLab/Megalab mass experiments with the BBC.
• An article on selling science to the public
• Judge of the science category of the Morgan Stanley Great Briton Awards
• Judge for Samuel Johnson Prize 2010

Books (UK editions)

• The Arrow of Time; The quest to solve time's greatest mystery (WH Allen) 1990
• The Private Lives of Albert Einstein (Faber) 1993
• Frontiers of Complexity: The Search for Order in a Chaotic World (Faber) 1995
• Can Reindeer Fly? The Science of Christmas. (Metro) 1998 (W&N) 2001.
• The Science of Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works (Headline) 2002.
• After Dolly: The uses and misuses of Human Cloning (Little Brown) 2006.