By Cole Moreton
Last updated at 10:00 PM on 26th February 2011
He looks more like a pop star than a particle physicist (but then he did have a No1 hit single). But how did Britain's top TV scientist go from touring alongside Take That to working on the Large Hadron Collider?
'I want people to have an emotional response to science, because that's what I have,' said Brian Cox
Scientists shouldn't look like this. They should have wild hair like Einstein or wild eyes like Patrick Moore, not amble into the room looking as if they've just come off stage at Glastonbury. But this is Professor Brian Cox, known as the 'rock-star scientist' and described by People magazine as the World's Sexiest Quantum Physicist, a title that makes him sigh.
'They were doing an A to Z of desirable people and needed to put someone in the Q category. Who else could it be?'
Cox prefers to call himself a particle physicist, which is apparently all about 'trying to understand what everything is made of and how everything sticks together'.
But suddenly he's also become the nation's favourite scientist, able to make television viewers swoon – or at least watch in rapt attention – as he explains the wonders of the universe. Lots of women say the professor makes their particles accelerate – and quite a few men do, too.
'Yeah. Well. There you go. I take that as a compliment. Gia says she thought I was gay when we first met, and therefore she could have a non-threatening night out with me.'
He's talking about his wife Gia Milinovich, the American producer he met ten years ago. They got off to a bad start.
'She saw me on television with the sound turned down and thought, "Oh no, they've hired another mindless pretty idiot from a pop band."'
That was a fair guess. Cox had only recently stopped playing keyboards with D:Ream, whose No 1 single Things Can Only Get Better had put him on Top Of The Pops. Gia was a serious-minded woman working on science shows for an internet television channel. She took a look at his pop-star clothes, Stone Roses haircut and wide smile, and groaned.
'Then she saw that my email address was from CERN (the research centre in Switzerland and home to the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator). She is a geek herself, so she was like, "Oh, wow. Maybe you're not mindless after all."'
That story illustrates the two sides of Brian Cox perfectly. On the one hand he's a boyishly handsome performer who looks good on camera. On the other he's a serious scientist who was studying for a first-class degree in physics even while he was with D:Ream.
'I was into science as far back as I can remember. The Apollo Moon landings happened when I was only a year old, but my dad loved all that and had posters up on the wall. Then when I got into music later, it was because of the electronics, the synthesisers.'
Cox gave up playing with D:Ream in the late Nineties to become a research scientist at Manchester University, and was sent on secondment to CERN – hence the email address that impressed Gia so much. It was his work there, leading a team, that earned Cox a professorship. Still, when they got married his name was only really known to academic peers.
'I am a geek. To me, that's someone who is immersed in science and engineering and all the real things about the universe and who values exploration and discovery. Not fluff'
Then came the Big Bang, or rather CERN's attempt to recreate conditions as they were at the creation of the universe, by firing particles at great speed around a vast underground loop and smashing them together.
The launch transformed his life. Cox was nominated as a spokesman, and although charming he also had an edge to him, sounding like Liam Gallagher in a lab coat: 'Anyone who thinks LHC will destroy the world is a t***.'
The BBC swooped. His first series, Wonders Of The Solar System, attracted six million viewers last year. The reason for that was Cox himself. Even in the flesh, you'd guess Cox was ten years younger than 42. Expect to see lots of close-ups this month in his new show Wonders Of The Universe. But it also contains a hefty dose of science.
'I insist on that. I like there to be some piece of science in it that's done really well. You can't do many because it's not the Open University and I'm as aware of that as the BBC schedulers are, but in the first programme of the new series we talk about something called the second law of thermodynamics, which is notoriously difficult to explain. We've had a really good go at it.'
I've heard his explanation before: 'The second law of thermodynamics means that if you want to process information, if your brain wants to work, then you need an energy source. We put energy in by eating things. When you're alive, everything works. When you die, it's like pulling a plug out of the wall. The law says that everything tends to disorder.'
He smiles when he talks about concepts like that, but then he smiles all the time. Some scientists are intimidating but Cox comes across as a matey Lancashire lad who just happens to have a brain the size of a planet.
'I am a geek. To me, that's someone who is immersed in science and engineering and all the real things about the universe and who values exploration and discovery. Not fluff. I think pop music is less interesting than the Apollo Moon landings. That's a geek.'
As for his new-found celebrity, if the paparazzi tried to snatch a picture of Cox he'd probably ask what camera lens they were using.
'I got used to attention from people when I was with D:Ream and we were touring with Take That and so on. There's more now, and it does make some things difficult, like when you're walking down the street and people recognise you. But it doesn't bother me that much.'
The young Cox did science and maths at A level, and at home in Oldham he loved watching The Sky At Night.
'That show was really big for me. Patrick Moore influenced a lot of people of my generation. I filmed the 700th Sky At Night this week with Patrick. I took a book down with me, a school prize I won in 1979, a Patrick Moore Observer's Book Of Astronomy. I got him to sign it. That was brilliant.'
Moore won over people with sheer enthusiasm and Cox does the same today.
D-Ream on stage in the mid-Nineties. Cox played keyboards (rear of picture)
'I want people to have an emotional response to science, because that's what I have. Thinking about the stars throws you outside of your own world and into the universe, and it is inspirational. Think about how rare life is, for example.
'The universe has been going for 11 billion years and will carry on until that moment in the future when it might end, which we predict might be around a year that can be written as ten followed by 100 noughts. In all of that time, the period when conditions have been right for life to exist will have been ludicrously small, a tiny sliver.
'Now think about the size of the universe, which may be infinite. So far, we can only say that there is life on this one tiny Earth. So in all that time and space life is very rare indeed, and rarity makes things valuable. That can make you feel extremely small but it should also make you feel special because we live in a moment and place that is so rare and precious.'
So is there only life on Earth?
'There are missions going to look for life on Mars and Jupiter's moon, Europa. If I was to put money on it I'd say that they'd find microbes on Mars in the next ten to 15 years. The big question is whether it is the same as life on Earth. If it turns out that it evolved separately, and is very different, then I think that will be huge; probably the biggest discovery in human history. I do expect that will be the case.'
So there is life on Mars, you heard it here first. But he's talking about microbes and I want to know about aliens.
'Are there little green men up there? Ha. You would think there must be. It's a paradox which Enrico Fermi, the great physicist, pointed out. He said that because there are so many planetary systems and there has been so much time, then even if just one other civilisation has arisen, say a million years before us, the evidence should be there to see, it should be all over the place.
'If we don't mess up we will be all over the galaxy in a thousand years. So my instinct would be yes, the galaxy should be crawling with civilisations. But we've looked and there's no evidence. I honestly don't understand it.'
Cox is a science-fiction fan who fell in love with his wife when he saw what was in her flat.
'Any woman who collects Star Wars toys is fine by me.' It remains to be seen whether their baby son George will turn out like his dad and be a 'bus spotter'.
'When I was a boy I had a book of all the serial numbers of the buses working in Greater Manchester and I ticked them off. I like buses. I went on to spot planes after that. Then when I got into music at 15 it was all about the electronics, with bands like Kraftwerk and early Ultravox.'
The large Hadron Colider is an attempt to recreate conditions as they were at the creation of the universe, by firing particles at great speed around a vast underground loop and smashing them together
He might have been obsessed with electronics, but the first band he joined was all about guitars and mullets.
'Dare were adult-oriented rock just at the point when the clubby music of Happy Mondays came out and torched all that. We were two or three years out of date, although we did get to make an album in Los Angeles.'
Dare had a fight on tour and split up – so Cox, then 23, applied to Manchester University and got in.
'Then while I was waiting for the academic year to start I joined D:Ream by accident. My friend Peter Cunnah needed someone to drive him and his DAT tape up and down the country to gigs. He got a record deal and asked me to play keyboards.'
D:Ream had a No 1 with Things Can Only Get Better in 1994, and it was a hit again three years later, after being taken up as the anthem of New Labour. Cox played keyboards at the election victory party on the South Bank.
'Everyone was dancing. I remember all that optimism.'
What does he think of it now, 14 years later?
'What it says to me is that Britain is a really small country, with a sense of optimism. Opinions can catch fire and really take hold. It took a while for it all to wear off.'
So is he still a Labour man?
'No, I'm not. I'm rather single-issue. I am quite political but not in a party-political way. I have a few agendas, and one of them is to get more attention for science and more investment. It's said that 6.7 per cent of our gross domestic product in this country comes from physics-based industry. That is more than the City. Yet if you look at the investment we make in physics, it's tiny.
'We are going backwards. While the level of funding for research has been preserved, other nations are increasing their spending fast. I do have a very clear message. I said it to (universities minister) David Willetts, I'll say it to Cameron if I get to him: make Britain the best place in the world to do science and engineering. It's a realistic ambition. Science is astonishingly cheap, small change compared to the money we spend on other things. Making science a national priority means spending 1bn or something. It's not ludicrous.'
Britain is second only to the U.S. for the quality of its scientific research, he says, yet we spend less on it than other European countries.
'We've got so little money that we only fund things like CERN and the European Space Agency, which are absolutely excellent and bound to work. Any venture capitalist will tell you that you don't just want to fund things that are guaranteed to work.'
Cox is also scathing about the rise in tuition fees.
'The aspiration of our country should be to educate everybody who wants to be educated to as high a standard as possible. It just seems obvious, right? If you get to a point where you are discouraging people who haven't got a lot of money from going to university, then first of all it's immoral. Second, it's ludicrous to think that if there is an Einstein or a Newton out there, then they are going to come from a rich family.'
Do his colleagues resent the attention he gets?
'They know that it's about the science. I want to get younger people involved and I want to use the platform I have to put pressure on the Government and on decision makers to support science. I'm completely open about that.'
The truth is that he only has the platform because he's good-looking, surely?
'You've got to use what you've got, haven't you? So if I can talk with some level of eloquence and, you know, look all right on television, then yes, I will.'
Wouldn't he be devastated if the BBC threw him back into obscurity?
'No. I don't see myself as a TV presenter. I don't have an ambition to have a career presenting programmes. I like being an academic. In the end, I would like people to be left with the feeling that science is delivering not only useful things but also something more profound, and profoundly human.
'When I was very young, I got caught up in the wonder of the Apollo Moon landings and I thought that looking at stars was just really powerful, a beautiful thing to do. I just want people to share that feeling.'
'Wonders Of The Universe' is on BBC2, on Sunday March 6, at 9pm
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