Professor Sir David King

Sir David King is Affiliate Partner at SYSTEMIQ Limited and Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda.

From 2013 until 2017 he was appointed as the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change (SRCC). He was formerly Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford, and the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office of Science from October 2000 to December 2007. In that time, he raised the profile of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the new £1 billion Energy Technologies Institute. In 2008 he co-authored The Hot Topic (Bloomsbury) on this subject.

As Director of the Government’s Foresight Programme, he created an in-depth horizon scanning process that advised government on a wide range of long-term issues, from flooding to obesity. He also chaired the Government’s Global Science and Innovation Forum from its inception. He advised government on issues including the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic of 2001; post 9/11 risks to the UK; GM foods; energy provision; and innovation and wealth creation. He was also heavily involved in the Government’s Science and Innovation Strategy 2004-2014.

Sir David was born in South Africa in 1939, and after an early career at the University of Witwatersrand, Imperial College and the University of East Anglia, he became the Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool in 1974. In 1988 he was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and subsequently became Master of Downing College (1995-2000) and Head of the University Chemistry Department (1993-2000). He has published over 450 papers on his research in chemical physics and on science and policy, and has received numerous prizes, fellowships, and honorary degrees. ‘Elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1991; Foreign Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2002; Knighted, 2003; and made Officier dans l’order National de la Legion d’Honeur, 2009.

Hope Jury

Sir David King (Chairman)

Affiliate Partner, SystemIQ Limited
Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda

Learn more

Martin Barnes and Marta Weiss

Senior Curators of Photographs
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Learn more

Philippe Bertherat

Former Managing Partner, Pictet Group

Learn more

Jan Dalley

Arts Editor, Financial Times

Learn more

Herminia Ibarra

Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour
London Business School

Learn more

Richard Mosse

Photographer, Winner of Prix Pictet Space

Learn more

Jeff Rosenheim

Curator in Charge, Photographs
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Learn more

Kazuyo Sejima

Co-Founder, SANAA
Pritzker Prize-winning architects

Learn more