Julian Barbour is a British physicist researching quantum gravity and the history of science. Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968, Barbour has supported himself and his family without an academic position, working part-time as a translator.

Barbour has written two books including The Discovery of Dynamics, which investigates the background to Newton’s great discoveries, and The End of Time in which he argues that time is an illusion.

In 2008 he received funding from the Foundational Questions Institute (fqxi.org) for a two-year research project on Machian Quantum Gravity.