Bernard J. Carr is a British

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University ...

(QMUL). His research interests include the early universe,

dark matter In astronomy, dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravity, gravitational effects that cannot be explained by general relat ...

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

, primordial black holes, and the

anthropic principle In cosmology, the anthropic principle, also known as the observation selection effect, is the proposition that the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations are only possible in ...

Education

He completed his BA in mathematics in 1972 at Trinity College,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. For his doctorate, obtained in 1976, he studied relativity and cosmology under

Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...

at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. He was the president of the Cambridge University Buddhist Society and is friends with

Ajahn Brahm Phra Visuddhisamvarathera (), known as Ajahn Brahmavaṃso, or simply Ajahn Brahm (born Peter Betts on 7 August 1951), is a British-born Buddhist monk. Ordained in 1974, he trained in the Thai Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism under hi ...

Academic career

In 1976 he was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity and he also became an advanced SERC fellow at the Institute of Astronomy. In 1979 he was awarded a Lindemann Fellowship for post-doctoral research in America and spent a year working in various universities there. In 1980 he took up a senior research fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. In 1985 he moved to the then Queen Mary College, University of London, where he is now professor of mathematics and astronomy. He has held visiting professorships at

Kyoto University , or , is a National university, national research university in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is one of the former Imperial Universities and the second oldest university in Japan. The university has ten undergraduate faculties, eighteen gra ...

Tokyo University The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

and the

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Fermilab's Main Injector, two miles (3.3 k ...

, and is a frequent visitor to other institutes in America and Canada. He is the author of more than two hundred scientific papers and his monograph, ''Cosmological Gravitational Waves'', won the 1985 Adams Essay Prize.

Interests outside academia

He has interests outside physics, including psychic research."Can Psychical Research Bridge the Gulf Between Matter and Mind?" Bernard Carr ''Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research'', Vol 59 Part 221 June 2008 He has been a member of the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...

(SPR) for thirty years, serving as its education officer and the chairman of its research activities committee for various periods. He was president of the SPR from 2000 to 2004. He is currently president of Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) in the UK. He has been the co-holder of a grant from the

John Templeton Foundation The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a Philanthropy, philanthropic organization founded by John Templeton in 1987. Templeton became wealthy as a Contrarian investing, contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in relig ...

for a project entitled ''Fundamental Physics and the Problem of our Existence''. He is the editor of a book based on a series of conferences funded by the Foundation, entitled ''Universe or Multiverse?'' Bernard Carr also made an appearance in the documentary film ''

The Trouble with Atheism ''The Trouble with Atheism'' is an hour-long documentary on atheism, presented by Rod Liddle. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in Britain in December 2006. The documentary focuses on criticising atheism for its perceived similarities to religion, ...

'', where he discussed these concepts, and also appeared in the science documentary film ''Target...Earth?'' (1980).

References

External links

Page at QMULPage at SMN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carr, Bernard Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Academics of Queen Mary University of London California Institute of Technology alumni Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Members of the Eurasian Astronomical Society British parapsychologists