Frank Close
Francis Edwin Close (Arabic: فرانك كلوس)
In addition to his scientific research, he is known for his lectures and writings making science intelligible to a wider audience.
From Oxford he went to Stanford University in California for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In 1973 he went to the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire and then to CERN in Switzerland from 1973–5. He joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in 1975 as a research physicist and was latterly Head of Theoretical Physics Division from 1991. He headed the communication and public education activities at CERN from 1997 to 2000. From 2001, he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham from 1996–2002.
Close lists his recreations as writing, singing, travel, squash and Real tennis, and he is a member of Harwell Squash Club.
“We have not been created out of nothing, but from primeval "ur-matter," atoms formed billions of years ago that have for a brief while been gathered into collections that think they are us.”
“We are the lucky ones for we shall die, as there is an infinite number of possible forms of DNA all but a few billions of which will never burst into consciousness.”