Brian Cox

Brian Edward Cox (born 3 March 1968) is an English physicist and musician who is a professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester and The Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science.

He is best known to the public as the presenter of science programmes, especially BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage and the Wonders of... series and for popular science books, such as Why Does E=mc²? and The Quantum Universe.

Cox has been described as the natural successor for the BBC's scientific programming by both David Attenborough and Patrick Moore.

Before his academic career, Cox was a keyboard player for the British bands Dare and D:Ream.

Cox was born on 3 March 1968 in the Royal Oldham Hospital, later living in nearby Chadderton from 1971.

He has a younger sister.

His parents worked for Yorkshire Bank, his mother as a cashier and his father as a middle-manager in the same branch.

He recalls a happy childhood in Oldham that included pursuits such as dance, gymnastics, and plane and bus spotting.

He attended the private Hulme Grammar School in Oldham from 1979 to 1986.

He has stated in many interviews and in an episode of Wonders of the Universe that when he was 12, the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan was a key factor in inspiring him to become a physicist.

He said on The Jonathan Ross Show that he performed poorly on his maths A-level exam: "I got a D ... I was really not very good ... I found out you need to practise."

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Cox was a keyboard player with the rock band Dare.

Dare released two albums with Cox – Out of the Silence in 1988 and Blood from Stone in 1991.

He subsequently joined dance act D:Ream, a group that had several hits in the UK charts, including the number one "Things Can Only Get Better", later used as a New Labour election anthem, although he did not play on the track.

In 1991, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with first-class honours in physics.

After D:Ream disbanded in 1997, he completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in high-energy particle physics at the University of Manchester in 1998.

His thesis, Double Diffraction Dissociation at Large Momentum Transfer, was supervised by Robin Marshall and based on research he did on the H1 experiment at the Hadron Elektron Ring Anlage (HERA) particle accelerator at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, Germany.

Cox is a particle physicist at the University of Manchester.

He worked on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.

He previously held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) advanced research fellowship.

Cox has co-written several books on physics including Why does E=mc2? and The Quantum Universe, both with Jeff Forshaw.

He has supervised or co-supervised several PhD students to completion including Tamsin Edwards.

Cox has appeared in many science programmes for BBC radio and television, including In Einstein's Shadow, the BBC Horizon series, ("The Six Billion Dollar Experiment", "What on Earth is Wrong with Gravity?", "Do You Know What Time It Is?", and "Can we Make a Star on Earth?") and as a voice-over for the BBC's Bitesize revision programmes.

Since November 2009 Cox has co-presented a BBC Radio 4 "comedy science magazine programme", The Infinite Monkey Cage with comedian Robin Ince.

Guests have included comedians Tim Minchin, Alexei Sayle, Dara Ó Briain, and scientists including Alice Roberts of the BBC show The Incredible Human Journey, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Cox also appeared in Ince's Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People.

He appeared on 24 July 2009 episode of Robert Llewellyn's CarPool podcast series.

He presented the five-part BBC Two television series Wonders of the Solar System in early 2010 and a follow-up four-part series, Wonders of the Universe, which began on 6 March 2011.

BBC Two commissioned Cox to copresent Stargazing Live, a three-day live astronomy series in January 2011 – co-presented with physicist-turned-comedian Dara Ó Briain and featuring chat show host Jonathan Ross – linked to events across the United Kingdom.

A second and a third series featuring a variety of guests ran in January 2012 and January 2013.

Wonders of Life, which he describes as "a physicist's take on life/natural history", was broadcast in 2013.

He co-presents Space Hoppers and has also featured in Dani's House on CBBC.

Cox also presented a three-part BBC series called Science Britannica which sees him explore the contribution of British scientists over the last 350 years, as well as the relationship between British science and the public perception thereof.

In 2015, he appeared as a guest keyboardist during a performance of the song "Your Silent Face" by New Order.

He played a live rendition of OMD's "Enola Gay", alongside frontman Andy McCluskey, in 2022.

Cox studied physics at the University of Manchester during his music career.

Cox wrote the foreword of the official Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark biography, OMD: Pretending to See the Future (2018), having been an "obsessive" fan of the band in his youth.

He said of their songs, "They shaped my character and inspired me to make music."

Cox continues to perform sporadically.

He was a regular contributor to the BBC 6 Music Breakfast Show (and the Afternoon Show since 2019) with Shaun Keaveny, with a weekly feature, and an annual Christmas special with Keaveny and Brian Eno.