Martin John Rees (born23 June1942 in York) is an Englishcosmologist andastrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004, and President of the Royal Society since 2005.
Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks onEarth (with the single exception of the catastrophic destruction ofspace itself). Will this happen before our technical civilisation disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it for ever?We live at what could be a defining moment for thecosmos, not just for our Earth.
Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning (2003)
We’re all depressingly ‘lay’ outside our specialisms — my own knowledge, of recent biological advances, such as it is, comes largely from ‘popular’ books and journalism.
When I discover I'm wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?
overheard in a colloquium at Princeton University, ca. 1997
... I'd want to emphasize that most progress in cosmology and astrophysics has been due to advanced instruments and technology — less than 5 per cent to armchair theory. And I'd expect that balance to continue.
This is exactly the kind of thingTempleton is ceaselessly angling for – recognition among real scientists – and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed craving for scientific respectability. They tried it on with theRoyal Society of London, and they seem to have found a compliantQuisling in the current President, Martin Rees, who, though not religious himself, is a fervent 'believer in belief'.
