Marcus Chown

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster. His books include Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You; We Need to Talk About Kelvin, shortlisted for the Royal Society science book prize; The Ascent of Gravity, the 2017 Sunday Times science book of the year; and Solar System for iPad, the Bookseller digital innovation of the year. The Sunday Times called his children’s book, Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil, ‘one of the books most likely to fire children’s imagination’.

Marcus Chown was a regular guest on the BBC4 comedy-science show, It’s Only A Theory, with Andy Hamilton and Reginald D. Hunter, and often appears on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. He has appeared at a variety of events, from the Cheltenham Literature festival to the Sydney Writers’ festival. He has also done stand-up comedy at a variety of venues from an upturned inflatable cow on London’s South Bank to a glass-bottomed boat in a shark tank at the Sea Life Brighton aquarium.

Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Marcus Chown worked as reviews editor, science news editor and cosmology consultant of New Scientist. He lives in London with his wife, an NHS nurse. Whereas she does a very socially useful job, he writes about things that are of absolutely no use to man or beast. Can time run backwards? Are there an infinity of universes playing out all possible histories? Was our Universe made by extraterrestrials in another universe?