Carlos Frenk
Carlos Silvestre Frenk (born 27 October 1951) is a Mexican-British cosmologist and the Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University. His main interests lie in the fields of cosmology, galaxy formation and computer simulations of cosmic structure formation. Early life and education. Carlos Frenk was born in Mexico City, Mexico and is the eldest son of six siblings. His father is a German Jewish doctor who emigrated from Germany at the age of 7, fleeing persecution in the lead up to World War II. His mother is a Mexican–Spanish pianist. Frenk studied engineering at the  National Autonomous University of Mexico but later changed to Theoretical Physics, earning an undergraduate degree in 1976. Later that year he secured a British Council Fellowship and enrolled at the University of Cambridge to read Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, which he was awarded in 1977. He remained at Cambridge for doctoral studies under the supervision of Bernard J. T. Jones and was awarded a PhD in astronomy in 1981. Career and research. Following an endowment from Peter Ogden in 2001, Frenk became the inaugural Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University and continues to hold this position  today. He is also co-Principal Investigator of the Virgo Consortium, alongside Simon White. Frenk became the Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology when it was established in 2001. He held this post until 2020 when he was succeeded by Shaun Cole. Awards and honours. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2004 and is a member of the Royal Society's Council. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2014. Other awards and honours include: Frenk was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017  Birthday Honours for services to cosmology and the public dissemination of basic science. He was interviewed by Kirsty Young for "Desert Island Discs", first broadcast in 2018.