John Durant

director, MIT Museum

From 1989 to 2000, he was director of science communications at the Science Museum in London, one of the oldest and largest museums of science and technology in the world. Appointed in 1989 by Imperial College, London, to the first professorship of Public Understanding of Science, he devoted the next 11 years to galvanizing the new field nationally and internationally, and also founded the first peer-reviewed international academic journal devoted to research in the public dimensions of science and technology. Most recently, as chief executive officer of At-Bristol, he helped establish the independent, not-for-profit science and natural history center as the largest science-based visitor attraction in the U.K. outside London. As a member of the House of Lords Select Committee of Science and Technology from 1999-2000, Durant assisted in the drafting and editing of one of the most influential and widely cited policy documents on science and society in Europe.