The Wonder of Brian Cox: The Unauthorised Biography of the Man Who Brought Science to the Nation

Professor Brian Cox is probably the best-known physicist in the world today. As presenter of the hit television series Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe, his affable charm and infectious enthusiasm has brought science to a whole new audience. Born in Lancashire in 1968, Cox was a bright, but not brilliant pupil at school - only receiving a D grade for A level mathematics. He flourished at university, however, gaining a first-class honours degree and an MPhil in Physics from Manchester University before being awarded his PhD in particle physics in 1998. Alongside his studies he also found time to play keyboards for the band D:Ream, and the band topped the charts in 1994 with 'Things Can Only Get Better', which was famously used by the Labour Party for its 1997 election campaign. Although he has appeared in several television shows, Brian Cox is not just a celebrity presenter - he is a Royal Society University Research Fellow, a professor at the University of Manchester, and he also works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. In 2010 he was awarded an OBE for his services to science, and he has also won several awards for his television work.