British born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1966, I have spent more than half my life out of the UK. First (of course) in South Africa (1966-68) then Italy (1973-77), France (1992/93), USA (1994) and now back to France (1994-present).

My interest in science has been active since an early age; at eight my wish was to be an entomologist. My interest in Physics was awakened by the gift of a book “Il Grande Libro delle Scienze” and further helped by the excellent physics teachers I had both at Petersfield Comprehensive School (Petersfield, UK) and the Minster School (Leominster, UK).

Despite my strong interest in Physics, I decided to read Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh in 1985, with Physics as an outside subject. I rapidly discovered that the Mathematics which really interested me was called Physics, and over the first two years at Edinburgh I transited to their Mathematical Physics degree. I graduated in 1989 with a first class degree, and proceeded to study for my Doctorate (DPhil) in Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Julia Yeomans, working on lattice models of polymers.

I came away from Oxford not only with a DPhil, but also with a wife to be. Married in 1994, Kari and I now have three children: John, Alice and Marta.

After Oxford, I spent fifteen months at the CEA Saclay working with Claude Godrèche on systems far from equilibrium, including the totally asymmetric exclusion process and then eight months at the University of Pittsburgh working with Anna Balazs on Block Copolymer melts. Since 1994 I have been a lecturer (or ‘assistant professor’ in North American terminology) in Physics at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, a recent university to the west of Paris.

For more details about my work, I invite you to explore my web pages.