John Barrow, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sussex, was born in London in 1952. His first degree, awarded from the University of Durham in mathematics, was followed in 1977 by a doctorate in astrophysics (supervised by Dennis Sciama) from the University of Oxford.

In 1981 Barrow took a position at the Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, where he served as Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Astronomy Centre until 1999. He has written over 325 scientific articles on astrophysics and cosmology, and has published fifteen books that explore the broader cultural and philosophical implications for scientific work in cosmology and astrophysics. His work has received broad recognition, including the Locker Prize for Astronomy, the Kelvin Medal of the Royal Glasgow Philosophical Society and an honorary D.Sci. degree from the University of Hertfordshire, the latter two in 1999.

Barrow, along with Don Cupitt, Richard Dawkins, John Habgood, Anthony Kenny and John Roberts, delivered the Glasgow Centenary Gifford Lectures, which were edited by Neil Spurway and published as Humanity, Environment and God (1993). The title of Professor Barrow's Gifford Lectures were “Inner Space and Outer Space: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation”.

Among Professor Barrow's most notable works are: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1988); The World Within the World (1990); Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation (1991); Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking and Being (1992); The Left Hand of Creation (1994); The Origin of the Universe (1994); The Artful Universe (1995); and The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega (2002).