---
title: "Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science"
chunk: 1/1
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonyi_Professor_for_the_Public_Understanding_of_Science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:26:18.553001+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science is a chair at the University of Oxford. The chair was established in 1995 for the ethologist Richard Dawkins by an endowment from Charles Simonyi. The aim of the Professorship is 'to communicate science to the public without, in doing so, losing those elements of scholarship which constitute the essence of true understanding'. It is a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.


== History ==

Richard Dawkins explained the history of the creation of the chair in a chapter of his memoirs, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science. In 2008, Dawkins retired and the Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy was elected to the chair.


== List of Simonyi Professors ==
1995–2008: Richard Dawkins, biological science
Since 2008: Marcus du Sautoy, mathematical science


== List of Simonyi Lectures ==
Richard Dawkins established an annual "Charles Simonyi Lecture" at the University of Oxford. He invited the following speakers:

Marcus du Sautoy, second Simonyi Professor, invited:


== Notes and references ==


== Bibliography ==
Richard Dawkins, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, Bantam Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-0-59307-256-1). Chapter "Simonyi Professor", pages 271-307.


== External links ==
Official website
Charles Simonyi's manifesto