Brian J Ford is a Fellow and Member of the Court of Governors of Cardiff University. The author of 30 books and many hundreds of articles and research papers, he is also well known as a broadcaster. He lectures internationally, and is resident in Cambridgeshire.

In a recent lecture in Chicago, Brian J Ford launched a view that has radically altered the way we can look at the development of science. The ideas were further developed in a lecture to the Institute for Cultural Research in London, which was widely reported in the popular and scientific press and by the BBC. In tonight's talk we meet the often-overlooked innovators whose work underpins the modern world. The conclusion is that scientific innovation is more often the province of the outsider, the rebel or the enthusiast than of the academic scientist. For major innovations, Ford concludes, universities and research institutes are fundamentally irrelevant.