Dr Neil Turok

Dr Neil Turok has been appointed executive director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, effective October 1, replacing Dr Howard Burton who resigned last year over a contract dispute. South African-born Turok is currently chair of mathematical physics at Cambridge Univ and director of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. He has worked in several areas of theoretical physics and cosmology including a collaboration with Dr Stephen Hawking resulting in the development of the Hawking-Turok instanton solutions describing the birth of inflationary universes. More recently he collaborated on the development of a cyclic model for cosmology. Turok obtained a PhD at Imperial College and in 1994 became a professor of physics at Princeton Univ. In Cape Town, he founded the post-graduate African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the first of 15 institutes planned over the next five years in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Madagasgar. Turok is the son of Ben Turok, an MP with the African National Congress….