PROFESSOR Brian Cox will today receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Warwick.
He will be presented with the honour at a ceremony today as part of the university’s winter graduation ceremonies.
In material released by the university to advertise the event: “Professor Brian has said in a number of interviews that when he was aged 12, Carl Sagan’s the book and TV series Cosmos first inspired him to become a physicist.
“However his first career was in rock music, initially joining the rock band Dare in 1989.
“In 1993, he joined the UK rock band D:Ream, which had a number of hits, including the number one “Things Can Only Get Better,” D:Ream disbanded in 1997 but Brian had also been studying physics alongside his musical career
“In 1995 Brian obtained a first class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester and in 1998 a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics for his work at the Hadron Elektron Ring Anlage (HERA) particle accelerator at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.
“He is now a member of the high energy physics group at the University of Manchester and in 2005, he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.
“He researches at the University of Manchester and at the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, home of the Large Hadron Collider.
“He works on both the ATLAS experiment and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment.
“His scientific publications include papers on quantum chromodynamics at high energies and novel techniques to identify hadronically decaying W – a new idea that has since developed into a whole sub-field of ‘boosted particle’ studies, now employed in Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments.
“Professor Cox also led the “FP420” project, which made the case for installing low-angle proton detectors at CERN.
“He combines an active research career with an equally active commitment to popularize science to the public, especially through presenting or appearances on a vast array of BBC programs such as The Big Bang Machine, In Einstein’s Shadow Horizon, the BBC’s Bitesize revision programmes, Wonders of the Solar System , Wonders of the Universe, Wonders of Life, Space Hoppers, Dani’s House, Science Britannica, Stargazing Live, The Science of Doctor Who, The Human Universe, the Sky at Night, QI and many, many more.
“He is also a co-host of the popular BBC radio program The Infinite Monkey Cage.
“He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s 2010 Birthday Honours for services to science, He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016.
“He has also received many other awards, particularly for his efforts to publicise science. In 2002 he was elected an International “Fellow of The Explorers Club and in 2006 he received the British Association’s Lord Kelvin Award for this work.
“He held a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship (an early-career Research Fellowship scheme) from 2006 to 2013.
“In 2010 he won the Institute of Physics Kelvin Prize for his work in communicating the appeal and excitement of physics to the general public.
“That year also saw him awarded a Peabody award for his Wonders of the Solar System TV series.
“In 2012 he was awarded the Michael Faraday Prize of the Royal Society “for his excellent work in science communication”.
