Neil Turok is the inaugural Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh. He holds the Roger Penrose Visiting Professorship at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada where he is emeritus director. Before that he was Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge and Professor of Physics at Princeton.
Neil’s day job is developing and testing fundamental physics theories of the universe. His first-principles predictions of correlations between the temperature and polarization of the cosmic background radiation (CBR) and the CBR and the galaxy distribution have been confirmed at high precision. His work also ruled out several popular theoretical models. Recently, he showed how a CPT-symmetric universe could provide the simplest-yet explanation of the cosmic dark matter, the large scale properties of the universe, and the primordial density variations.
Born in South Africa, Neil founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), now the continent’s leading institute for postgraduate training and research in the mathematical sciences. AIMS has over 3,500 Masters alumni, from 45 African countries. More than 800 have proceeded to PhDs.
In 2008, Neil won the TED prize for his research and for AIMS. In 2016, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the UK Institute of Physics and was awarded the John Torrence Tate Medal of the American Institute of Physics for International Leadership in Physics. In 2018, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.
