Sir Gareth Roberts

Sir Gareth Gwyn Roberts FRSFREng (16 May 1940 – 6 February 2007) was a Welsh physicist specialising in semiconductors and molecular electronics, who was influential in British science policy through his chairmanship of several academic bodies and his two reports on the future supply of scientists and how university research should be assessed. He was knighted in 1997 for his services to higher education.

Born in Penmaenmawr, Caernarvonshire, North Wales, he studied physics to PhD level at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, graduating in 1964.

Following a post at the New University of Ulster, he was appointed Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Durham in 1976, where he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1984. He went back into industry in 1985 as Director of Research at Thorn EMI plc, and was appointed to a Visiting Professorship in the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford and to a Fellowship at Brasenose College in 1986. He presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1988.

He was a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Science and Technology from July 1989 to July 1992.

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