Andrew Briggs

Early life and education

He was born in Dorchester, Dorset, son of David Briggs, a classics teacher at Bryanston School Dorset, and later headmaster of King's College School Cambridge, and Mary (née Lormer), and EPSRC Professorial Research Fellow.

Since 2010 he has also been responsible for the preparation and evaluation of grant proposals to Templeton World Charity Foundation which serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. He has initiated a large number of research projects and related activities around the world, in topics such as spiritual discovery through science, science as a component of theology, the power of information, freedom and free enterprise, and character development.

He has published over 600 papers, books and articles; the majority in internationally reviewed journals. Having established the key necessary phenomena in ensembles of large numbers of spins, since 2013 he has worked on harnessing quantum properties in devices. He has also shown how the materials and techniques developed for quantum information technologies can be used for investigating the nature of reality in the context of different interpretations of quantum theory.

Fellowships, memberships, and overseas appointments

1984 Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford 1994 Buehler Technical Paper Merit Award for Excellence. "Depth measurements of short cracks in perspex with the scanning acoustic microscope." Materials Characterization 31, 115–126 (1993), reprinted in Materials Characterization 39, 653–644 (1997). 1999 Metrology for World Class Manufacturing Awards: Winner (with Dr O.V. Kolosov), Category 1, Frontier Science and Measurement. “Ultrasonic Force Microscopy (UFM)”, ‘Kolosov and Briggs have demonstrated the effect on various materials and shown that UFM is capable of both high resolution and quantitative measurement.’ 2007 Oxfordshire Science Writing Competition: 2nd Prize for article ‘Molecules are Real.’

Other activities Peer Review College of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Science and Engineering Fellowships Committee of The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851; Engineering Review Panel of the Newton International Fellowships; Board of Management of the Ian Ramsey Centre; Advisory Board of the McDonald Centre; Board of Electors to the Wilde Lectureship in Natural and Comparative Religion; Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers and Freeman of the City of London; Editorial Board of Science & Christian Belief; International Board of Advisors of the John Templeton Foundation.

Publications

An Introduction to Scanning Acoustic Microscopy. Royal Microscopical Society Handbook 12, Oxford University Press (1985). Andrew Briggs. Acoustic Microscopy. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1992). Andrew Briggs The Science of New Materials. Oxford: Blackwell (1992). Ed Andrew Briggs Advances in Acoustic Microscopy 1. New York: Plenum Press (1995). Ed Andrew Briggs Advances in Acoustic Microscopy 2. New York: Plenum Press (1996). Eds Andrew Briggs and Walter Arnold Acoustic Microscopy, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press (2010). G.A.D. Briggs and O.V. Kolosov The Penultimate Curiosity: How science swims in the slipstream of ultimate questions. Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs, Oxford University Press (2016) It Keeps Me Seeking: The Invitation from Science, Philosophy and Religion. Andrew Briggs, Hans Halvorson, and Andrew Steane, Oxford University Press (2018) Human Flourishing: Scientific Insight and Spiritual Wisdom in Uncertain Times. Andrew Briggs and Michael J. Reiss, Oxford University Press (2021)

Personal life Andrew Briggs is a practising Christian.

Briggs is a resident of Northmoor Road, Oxford, and for several years the artist Roger Wagner and Briggs lived in the same house, which ultimately led to them co-authoring a book, The Penultimate Curiosity: How science swims in the slipstream of ultimate questions.