JAMEEL SADIK "JIM" AL-KHALILI (b. 1962) is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster, and one of the best-known science communicators in Britain. He holds a Distinguished Chair in physics as well as a university chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries and the long-running Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific, in which he talks to leading scientists about their work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for mankind.
His research background is in the field of theoretical nuclear physics. This has mostly been in the development of few-body quantum scattering methods to study nuclear reaction mechanisms and nuclear structure, particularly as applied to the study of exotic nuclei produced by radioactive beam facilities around the world. His interests have spanned a wide range of reaction energies from the study of the light nuclei using electromagnetic probes such as electron scattering and photo-induced pion production reactions, to reactions of astrophysical interest. Over the past few years, he has become interested studying quantum mechanisms in biology and has published several papers on quantum tunneling in DNA.
His most recent work, THE JOY OF SCIENCE (2022), presents 8 short lessons on how to unlock the clarity, empowerment, and joy of thinking and living a little more scientifically. Discussing the nature of truth and uncertainty, the role of doubt, the pros and cons of simplification, the value of guarding against bias, the importance of evidence-based thinking, and more, Al-Khalili shows how the powerful ideas at the heart of the scientific method are deeply relevant to the complicated times we live in and the difficult choices we make.
He has written one science-fiction novel, SUNFALL (2019).
Al-Khalili is a past president of the British Science Association and a recipient of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday medal and the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. He received an OBE in 2007 for "services to science".
The following books are in ePUB format unless otherwise noted:
== NON-FICTION ==
* Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines, 2e (CRC, 2012) — PDF * Gravity (Michael Joseph, 2019) * House of Wisdom, The (Penguin, 2011) * Joy of Science, The (Princeton, 2022) * Life on the Edge: Quantum Biology (Broadway, 2014) — ePUB + PDF * Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science (Broadway, 2012) * Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science (Allen Lane, 2010) * Quantum Mechanics (Michael Joseph, 2017) * Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed (Phoenix, 2012) * World According to Physics, The (Princeton, 2020) — ePUB + PDF
== FICTION ==
* Sunfall (Transworld, 2019)
== EDITOR ==
* Aliens (Picador, 2017) * What the Future Looks Like (The Experiment, 2018) — ePUB + PDF * What’s Next (Profile Books, 2017)
