Christopher Michael Bishop (born 7 April 1959) is a British computer scientist. He is a Microsoft Technical Fellow and Director o
Microsoft Research AI4Science
He is also Honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Bishop was a founding member of th
UK AI Council
and in 2019 he was appointed to th
Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology

Early life and education

Christopher Michael Bishop was born on 7 April 1959 in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

, England, to Leonard and Joyce Bishop. He was educated at Earlham School in Norwich, and obtained a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in physics from St Catherine's College, Oxford, and later a PhD in theoretical physics from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, with a thesis on quantum field theory supervised by David Wallace and Peter Higgs.

Research and career

Bishop investigates

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

, in which computers are made to learn from data and experience. His former doctoral students include Neil Lawrence and Danielle Belgrave.

Publications

Bishop is the author of two highly cited and widely adopted machine learning text books: Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition and Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. His latest book, Deep Learning, Foundations and Concepts, was published in 2023 by Springer.

Awards and honours

Bishop was awarded the Tam Dalyell prize in 2009 and the Rooke Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2008 and the Turing Lecture in 2010. Bishop was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2004, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2007, and

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 2017.

Personal life

Bishop married Jennifer Mary Morris in 1988. They have two sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bishop, Christopher 1959 births Living people British physicists British computer scientists Computer science educators Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Edinburgh Academics of Aston University Fellows of the British Computer Society Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society Microsoft employees Microsoft Research people Computer science writers People from Norwich