Professor Chris Lintott

Professor Chris Lintott

Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.

Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He is Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’.

Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max, with whom he presents the Dog Stars podcast. 

Past Astronomy Professors

Edward Brerewood (1596)
Thomas Williams (1613)
Edmund Gunter (1619)
Henry Gellibrand (1626)
Samuel Foster (1636)
Mungo Murray (1637)
Samuel Foster (1641)
Lawrence Rooke (1652)
Sir Christopher Wren (1657)
Walter Pope (1660)
Daniel Man (1687)
Alexander Torriano (1691)
John Machin (1713)
William Romaine (1751)
William Cockayne (1752)
Peter Sandiford (1795)
Joseph Pullen (1833)
Edmund Ledger (1875)
Samuel Arthur Saunder (1908)
Arthur Robert Hinks (1913)
William Herbert Steavenson (1946)
Sir John Carroll (1964)
Sir Martin Ryle (1968)
Roger Tayler (1969)
Sir Lord Rees of Ludlow FRS (1975)
David W Dewhirst (1976)
Michael Rowan-Robinson (1981)
Andrew Fabian (1982)
Raymond Hide (1984)
Lord Porter of Luddenham OM FRS (1990)
Heather Couper FRAS (1993)
Colin Pillinger FRS (1996)
Frank Close OBE (2000)
John D Barrow FRS (2003)
Ian Morison (2007)
Carolin Crawford (2011)
Joseph Silk (2015)
Katherine Blundell OBE (2019)
Chris Lintott (2023)
 

Find out more about our Professors in Our History section.