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Paul Davies

English physicist, writer and broadcaster (born 1946)

English physicist, writer and broadcaster (born 1946)

FieldValue
namePaul Davies
honorific_suffix
birth_namePaul Charles William Davies
imagePaul Davies 2016.jpg
captionDavies in 2016
birth_date
birth_placeLondon, United Kingdom
fieldsPhysics
workplaces{{ublArizona State UniversityUniversity College LondonUniversity of Cambridge
alma_materUniversity College London
doctoral_advisors
thesis_titleContributions to Theoretical Physics: (i) Radiation Damping in the Optical Continuum; (ii) A Quantum Theory of Wheeler–Feynman Electrodynamics
thesis_year1970
academic_advisorsFred Hoyle (postdoctoral advisor)
notable_studentsSara Imari Walker
Edmund Copeland
known_forFulling–Davies–Unruh effect
Bunch–Davies vacuum state
Davies-Fulling "moving mirror" modelThe Davies-Fulling model describes the scattering of a massless scalar field by a mirror moving
in two dimensions. It provides insights into the physics of Hawking radiation. See: {{cite journallast1Fullingfirst1=S. A.last2=Daviesfirst2=P. C. W.date=1976title=Radiation from a moving mirror in two dimensional space-time: conformal anomalyjournal=Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Avolume=348issue=1654pages=393–414jstor=79130doi=10.1098/rspa.1976.0045bibcode=1976RSPSA.348..393Fs2cid=122176090 }}
awards
website

King's College London |University of Adelaide | Macquarie University | Newcastle University}} Edmund Copeland Bunch–Davies vacuum state Davies-Fulling "moving mirror" modelThe Davies-Fulling model describes the scattering of a massless scalar field by a mirror moving in two dimensions. It provides insights into the physics of Hawking radiation. See:

Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies in Chapman University in California. He previously held academic appointments in the University of Cambridge, University College London, King's College London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology.

In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics. Davies serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Davies was a co-author with Felisa Wolfe-Simon on the 2011 Science article "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus". The article has been retracted.

Education

Born on 22 April 1946, Davies was brought up in Finchley, London. He attended Woodhouse Grammar School and studied physics at University College London, gaining a Bachelor of Science degree with first-class honours in 1967.

In 1970, he completed his PhD under the supervision of Michael J. Seaton and Sigurd Zienau at University College London. He carried out postdoctoral research under Fred Hoyle in the University of Cambridge.

Scientific research

Davies' research interests are theoretical physics, cosmology and astrobiology; his research has been mainly in the area of quantum field theory in curved spacetime. His notable contributions are the so-called Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect, according to which an observer accelerating through empty space will be subject to a bath of induced thermal radiation, and the Bunch–Davies vacuum state, often used as the basis for explaining the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background left over from the Big Bang. A paper co-authored with Stephen Fulling and William Unruh was the first to suggest that black holes evaporating via the Hawking effect lose mass as a result of a flux of negative energy streaming into the hole from the surrounding space. Davies has had a longstanding association with the problem of time's arrow, and has also identified the mystery of 'dark energy' as one of the most important issues facing fundamental science. Davies was also an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars cocooned in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts. He is also a propagator of scientific research and technology development in order to prevent future comet impacts threatening the development or existence of humankind. He proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option in the future. During his time in Australia he helped establish the Australian Centre for Astrobiology.

Davies was a co-author on the 2011 Science article "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus". Reports refuting the most significant aspects of the original results were published in the same journal in 2012. Following the publication of the articles challenging the conclusions of the original Science article first describing GFAJ-1, the website Retraction Watch argued that the original article should be retracted because of misrepresentation of critical data. The article has been retracted.

Davies is an outreach investigator at Arizona State University's Center for Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology. This is part of a program set up by the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute to involve physicists in cancer research which has set up a network of 12 Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers.

Awards

Davies received the Templeton Prize in 1995.Niebuhr, Gustav (March 9, 1995). "Scientist Wins Religion Prize Of $1 Million." He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. Davies' talent as a communicator of science has been recognized in Australia by an Advance Australia Award and two Eureka Prizes, and in the UK by the 2001 Kelvin Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics, and the 2002 Faraday Prize by The Royal Society. Davies was made a member of the Order of Australia in the 2007 Queen's birthday honours list. The minor planet 6870 Pauldavies is named after him.

Media work

Davies writes and comments on scientific and philosophical issues. He made a documentary series for BBC Radio 3, and two Australian television series, The Big Questions and More Big Questions. His BBC documentary The Cradle of Life featured the subject of his Faraday Prize lecture. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has been guest on numerous radio and television programmes including the children's podcast programme Ask A Biologist.

A 2007 opinion piece "Taking Science on Faith" in The New York Times,{{cite news| first=Paul|last=Davies| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html| newspaper = The New York Times| title=Taking Science on Faith| date=2007-11-24| access-date=2010-10-02}} generated controversy over its exploration of the role of faith in scientific inquiry. Davies argued that the faith scientists have in the immutability of physical laws has origins in Christian theology, and that the claim that science is "free of faith" is "manifestly bogus". Edge.org presented a criticism of Davies' article written by Jerry Coyne, Nathan Myhrvold, Lawrence Krauss, Scott Atran, Sean Carroll, Jeremy Bernstein, PZ Myers, Lee Smolin, John Horgan, Alan Sokal and a response by Davies beginning "I was dismayed at how many of my detractors completely misunderstood what I had written. Indeed, their responses bore the hallmarks of a superficial knee-jerk reaction to the sight of the words 'science' and 'faith' juxtaposed."{{cite web |access-date=2010-09-28 |archive-date=15 June 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100615220503/http://edge.org/discourse/science_faith.html |url-status=dead |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/goddelusion00dawk_0 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100607135118/http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/RelSci/CosmicBlueprint.htm |archive-date = 7 June 2010 |author-link=Gail D. Zimmerman |access-date=3 June 2024 |access-date=3 June 2024 |archive-date=3 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240603164655/https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2010/26-march/features/not-life-as-we-know-it-jim |url-status=dead |access-date=3 June 2024}}

Davies wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal describing the background to the December 2010 arsenic bacteria press conference and stating that he supported the finding of Felisa Wolfe-Simon that arsenic can replace phosphorus because "I had the advantage of being unencumbered by knowledge. I dropped chemistry at the age of 16, and all I knew about arsenic came from Agatha Christie novels."{{cite news | access-date=5 December 2010

Works

  • 1974 The Physics of Time Asymmetry, University of California Press, Berkeley, California,
  • 1978 The Runaway Universe, Penguin Books,
  • 1979 Stardoom, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,
  • 1979 The Forces of Nature, Cambridge University Press,
  • 1980 Other Worlds, Touchstone/Simon and Schuster,
  • 1980 The Search for Gravity Waves, Cambridge University Press,
  • 1981 The Edge of Infinity, Penguin USA,
  • 1982 The Accidental Universe, Cambridge University Press,
  • 1982 Quantum Fields in Curved Space, (with N.D. Birrell), Cambridge University Press,
  • 1983 God and the New Physics, Simon & Schuster,
  • 1984 Superforce, Touchstone,
  • 1986 The Ghost in the Atom, Cambridge University Press,
  • 1987 The Cosmic Blueprint, Simon & Schuster,
  • 1988 Superstrings: A Theory of Everything, Cambridge University Press,
  • 1989 The New Physics, Cambridge University Press,
  • 1991 The Matter Myth, Simon & Schuster,
  • 1992 The Mind of God, Simon & Schuster UK,
  • 1994 The Last Three Minutes, Basic Books,
  • 1995 Are We Alone?, Basic Books,
  • 1995 About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster,
  • 1998 The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  • 2002 How to Build a Time Machine, Penguin Books,
  • 2003 The Origin of Life, Penguin Books,
  • 2007 The Goldilocks Enigma, also under the title Cosmic Jackpot, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
  • 2008 Quantum Aspects of Life (eds. Derek Abbott, Paul C. W. Davies, and Arun K. Pati, with foreword by Sir Roger Penrose), Imperial College Press,
  • 2010 The Eerie Silence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
  • 2010 Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press,
  • 2019 The Demon in the Machine, Allen Lane,
  • 2021 What's Eating The Universe? (And Other Cosmic Questions), Allen Lane,
  • 2025 Quantum 2.0: The Past, Present, and Future of Quantum Physics, Pelican,

Technical books

  • 1974 The Physics of Time Asymmetry, University of California Press, Berkeley California,
  • 1982 (with N. D. Birrell) Quantum Fields in Curved Space, Series: Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics, Cambridge University Press.
  • 1984 Quantum Mechanics, (with David S. Betts), 2nd edition, CRC Press, 1994.

Essays and papers

References

References

  1. {{MathGenealogy
  2. (2011). "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus". Science.
  3. (24 July 2025). "After 15 years of controversy, Science retracts 'arsenic life' paper".
  4. Davies, Paul. (1970). "Contributions to theoretical physics: (i) Radiation damping in the optical continuum; (ii) A quantum theory of Wheeler–Feynham electrodynamics". [[University College London]].
  5. Leman, Jennifer. (2022-04-27). "This Experiment Could Finally Show Us What Hyperspace Looks Like".
  6. (2021-09-06). "Cosmology, next-gen".
  7. (19 November 2020). "Humanity must build technology to 'destroy large incoming asteroid', says Richard Dawkins".
  8. (2012). "GFAJ-1 is an Arsenate-Resistant, Phosphate-Dependent Organism". Science.
  9. David Sanders. (2012-07-09). "Despite refutation, Science arsenic life paper deserves retraction, scientist argues". Retraction Watch.
  10. Sanders. (21 January 2021). "Why one biologist says it's not too late to retract the "arsenic life" paper".
  11. "Center for Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology".
  12. (2023-09-01). "Davies, Paul".
  13. "Paul Davies, Ph.D.". John Templeton Foundation.
  14. (4 December 2010). "Bacterium calls for biology rewrite: Transcript". [[ABC (Australian TV channel).
  15. (9 July 2012). "Studies refute arsenic bug claim". [[BBC News]].
  16. Tobias J. Erb. (8 July 2012). "GFAJ-1 Is an Arsenate-Resistant, Phosphate-Dependent Organism". Science.
  17. [http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2012/01/csclmass-spectrometry-data.html RRResearch] By Rosie Redfield. 16 January 2012
  18. Marshall Louis Reaves. (8 July 2012). "Absence of Detectable Arsenate in DNA from Arsenate-Grown GFAJ-1 Cells". Science.
  19. Redfield, Rosie. (3 February 2012). "Authorship without responsibility?". RRResearch.
  20. Ørsted, Bent. (1983). "Review: ''Quantum Fields in Curved Space'', by N. D. Birrell and P. C. W. Davies". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.).
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