John G. Taylor

John Gerald Taylor (18 August 1931 – 10 March 2012) was a British physicist and author.

Taylor gained a PhD from Christ's College, Cambridge (1950–1956). He had a wide ranging academic career in mathematical physics and artificial intelligence. He was an Emeritus Professor and Director of the Centre for Neural Networks at King's College London and Guest Scientist of the Research Centre at the Institute of Medicine in Jülich, Germany. From 2007–2012, Taylor had led a unique research program at Commerzbank's Alternative Investment Strategies (COMAS) Group. The program uses artificial intelligence techniques to create portfolios of hedge funds. This is the first program of its kind in the fund of hedge funds industry.

In 2011, Taylor co-founded Commonwealth Capital Management LLP together with Nathaniel Philip Rothschild and Mehraj Mattoo. The company launched its first systematic fund of CTAs on Deutsche Bank's dbSelect platform based on Taylor's artificial intelligence models developed while he worked at COMAS.

His previous positions and interests, while still at King's College, were in mathematics and physics. He was the author of many popular books.

Taylor also trained as an actor and performed in plays and films, wrote several science fiction plays as well as directing stage productions in Oxford and Cambridge.

Taylor after witnessing spoon bending by Uri Geller became interested in parapsychology. At first he believed that Geller's feats were genuine as well as other alleged paranormal phenomena. He wrote a book titled Superminds (1975) in which he argued for a physical explanation for the paranormal. He believed the explanation for extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, spoon bending and other paranormal phenomena may be found in electromagnetism. However, experiments that he conducted under laboratory conditions were negative which left him sceptical regarding the validity of paranormal phenomena.

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