Russell is the Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, the founding Director of the Sir Jules Thorn Sleep and Circadian Research Neuroscience Institute (SCNi) and is a Fellow of Brasenose College Oxford. His research addresses how circadian rhythms and sleep are generated and regulated and what happens when these systems fail because of societal pressures, age and illness. A key finding was his discovery and characterisation of an unrecognised light-detecting system within the eye that regulates circadian rhythms and sleep and, most recently, the translation of these findings to the clinic. For his work, Russell was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2008, the Royal Society of Biology in 2011, the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013, and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (2024). He was honoured by being appointed as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2015 for services to Science.
He has been a member of the Governing Council of the Royal Society, and he established and led for six years the Royal Society Public Engagement Committee. He was the Chair of the Cheltenham Science Festival for six years and a Trustee of the Science Museum Group for eight years. He chairs multiple committees at the Royal Society and has recently been appointed as the Chair of the Board of Visitors at the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford. Russell has published over 300 scientific papers and has received multiple national and international awards, including most recently the “Daylight Prize”. He has co-written four popular science books and his fifth, as sole author for Penguin, entitled Life Time was published in May 2022 and was on the Sunday Times Best Seller list in both hardback (2022) and paperback (2023). He is working on his next book on Light, again for Penguin, with a publication date set for early 2027.
