“Do we need more than physics to understand the world?”  I first asked myself this question as a teenager and it has been the driving force behind my career ever since. After a degree in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge and a master’s in Philosophy at Warwick, I eventually found economics to be an appealing middle ground and completed a PhD at Birkbeck College, London.  To pay the rent, I taught English, developed and sold trading software and was the numbers' guru for a boutique finance house.

My 15 year academic career was mostly spent as an Associate Professor at University College London, working in one of Europe’s top economics departments.  My research involved building mathematical models of an extremely complex system, the macroeconomy, and I published my work in all the top macroeconomics journals.  Whether working on philosophy or economics, I never stopped reading science and exchanging with scientists.  In 2018 I left UCL to concentrate on my original question and the wide-ranging, multidisciplinary and endlessly fascinating project it has become.