Abbreviated Biographical Information: JOHN D. BARROW John D.

Barrow was born in London in 1952 and attended Ealing Grammar School. He graduated in Mathematics from Durham University in 1974, received his doctorate in Astrophysics from Oxford University in 1977 (supervised by Dennis Sciama), and held positions at the Universities of Oxford and California at Berkeley before taking up a position at the Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex in 1981. He was professor of astronomy and Director of the Astronomy Centre at the University of Sussex until 1999. He is the author of more than 425 scientific articles on cosmology and astrophysics, and is a recipient of the Locker Prize for Astronomy, the 1999 Kelvin Medal of the Royal Glasgow Philosophical Society, the 2005 Lacchini Prize for astronomy, and the 2006 Templeton Prize. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the Universities of Hertfordshire, and Szczecin, and is an honorary professor at the University of Nanjing. He held a Senior 5-year Research Fellowship from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the UK in 1994-9. He held the Gresham Professorship of Astronomy for the period 2003-7 and is now Emeritus Gresham Professor of Astronomy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003. In July 1999 he took up a new appointment as Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University and Director of the Millennium Mathematics Project, a new initiative to improve the understanding and appreciation of mathematics and its applications amongst young people and the general public. The Millennium Mathematics Project was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for educational achievement in 2005. He is also Fellow and Vice-President (2004-7) of Clare Hall College, Cambridge. He has written 17 books, translated into 28 languages, which explore many of the wider historical, philosophical and cultural ramifications of developments in astronomy, physics and mathematics: these include, The Left Hand of Creation (with Joseph Silk), The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with Frank Tipler), L'Homme et le Cosmos (with Frank Tipler), The World Within the World, Theories of Everything, Pi in the Sky: counting, thinking and being, Prche il mondo matematico?, The Origin of the Universe, The Artful Universe, Impossibility: the limits of science and the science of limits, Between Inner Space and Outer Space, The Book of Nothing and The Constants of Nature: from alpha to omega, The Artful Universe Expanded, and most recently, The Infinite Book: a short guide to the boundless, timeless and endless. He has written a successful stage play, Infinities, which was performed (in Italian) at the Teatro la Scala, Milan, in the Spring of 2002 and again in 2003 under the direction of Luca Ronconi and in Spanish at the Valencia Festival. It was the winner of the Italian Premi Ubu award for best play in the Italian theatre in 2002 and the 2003 Italgas Prize for the promotion of science. His next book, Cosmic Imagery: key images in the history of science, about the role of pictures in the development of science will be published in April 2008. He is a frequent lecturer to audiences of all sorts in many countries. He has given many notable public lectures in many countries, including the 1989 Gifford Lectures at Glasgow University, the George Darwin and Whitrow Lectures of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Amnesty International Lecture on Science in Oxford, The Flamsteed Lecture, The Tyndall Lecture, The Brasher Lecture, The RSA Christmas Lecture for Children, the Boyle Lecture, the Roscoe Lecture, and the Spinoza Lecture at

the University of Amsterdam. John Barrow also has the curious distinction of having delivered lectures on cosmology at the Venice Film Festival, 10 Downing Street, Windsor Castle and the Vatican Palace.