"You have no beginning of time. It's always been there."

Neil Turok is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist who has spent his career asking the most fundamental question in science: how did the universe begin? He is best known for his quantum-cosmology calculations with Stephen Hawking, and for the cyclic-universe and ekpyrotic models developed with Paul Steinhardt, theories that directly challenge the dominant model of cosmic inflation. His most recent work proposes a "mirror universe": the idea that a parallel anti-universe, moving backwards in time from our perspective, was pulled into existence alongside our own at the moment of the Big Bang.

He has held professorships at Princeton and the Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge, and has held the Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh since 2020. He has been awarded the TED Prize for his work in mathematical physics and in establishing the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Muizenberg. In 2026, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his groundbreaking work in theoretical physics.

"I have been very impressed by his insight and originality." — Stephen Hawking