James Binney has degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and has studied in the Albert Ludwigs
Universitaet, Freiburg i. Breisgau. After three postdoctoral years in Princeton he joined the Physics faculty at
Oxford and has there taught courses ranging from first-year mathematical methods, through statistical physics,
quantum mechanics, general relativity, group theory and differential geometry and physics. He researches the
structure, formation and dynamics of galaxies. For this work he has received the Maxwell Medal and the Dirac
Medal from the Institute of Physics, the Dirk Brouwer Award from the American Astronomical Society and the
Eddington Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000. He is
joint author of Galactic Dynamics (Princeton UP 1987, 2008), Galactic Astronomy (Princeton UP 1998) and The
Theory of Critical Phenomena (Oxford UP 1992).

David Skinner obtained his PhD from Oxford Physics and took postdoctoral positions in Oxford Maths, Perimeter
and IAS before joining DAMTP, Cambridge. He is interested in quantum field theory, string theory and twistor
theory.