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Professor John Barrow

It is with great sadness that we hear of the death of John Barrow, who joined the University of Sussex in 1981 and rose to become Professor and Director of the Astronomy Centre.

He left in 1999 to become founding director of the Millennium Mathematics Project, an outreach and education programme to improve the appreciation, teaching and learning of mathematics and its applications.

As well as publishing over 500 scientific journal articles, John was a true polymath, writing many books on popular science and having his play “Infinities” win the Premi Ubu 2002 Italian Theatre Prize.

He is the only person to have held two Gresham chairs and he has lectured at the Vatican, Windsor Palace and 10 Downing Street. He liked to tell the tale of how he dared to lecture Margaret Thatcher on the topic of inflation (cosmological, not economic!).

John was particularly interested in the philosophy of science and wrote a very influential book with Frank Tipler, “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle”, which discusses the extent to which the Universe seems designed for intelligent life. He is quoted as saying "A universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind capable of understanding it." In 2006, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for "Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities".

John’s numerous awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Paul Dirac Medal from the Institute of Physics and the Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society. He was given an honorary degree from the University of Sussex in 2010.

John passed away peacefully on Saturday 26 September. His wife Elizabeth and son Roger were by his side.

Author: Prof. P. A. Thomas,