Professor Christopher Timpson

Positions

University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy,
Brasenose College

Qualifications

MA, BPhil, DPhil (Oxon.)

Academic Background

Chris Timpson read Physics and Philosophy as an undergraduate at the Queen's College, Oxford (1994-98), staying on at Queen's for the BPhil in Philosophy (2000) and subsequently the DPhil (2004). In 2004 he moved to Leeds University as a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Division of History and Philosophy of Science, before returning to Oxford as a Fellow of Brasenose in 2007.

Undergraduate Teaching

Professor Timpson teaches a wide range of subjects for Schools involving philosophy, including the philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mind and language; and Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein (both early and late).

(For details of the Physics and Philosophy undergraduate degree at Oxford see here and here.)

Research Interests

Professor Timpson's research focuses on the philosophy of physics, especially the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. He also has interests in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, and the history of 20th Century Anglophone philosophy.

Selected Recent Publications

‘Philosophical Aspects of Quantum Information Theory' forthcoming in D. Rickles (ed.) The Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics (Ashgate 2008).

‘Non-locality and gauge freedom in Deutsch and Hayden's formulation of quantum mechanics', with D. Wallace,  in Foundations of Physics 37(6):951-955 (2007).

‘The Grammar of Teleportation', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57:587-621 (2006).

‘Nonlocality and Information Flow: The approach of Deutsch and Hayden', Foundations of Physics 35(2):313-343 (2005).

‘Quantum Computers: The Church-Turing Hypothesis versus the Turing Principle', in  C. Teuscher (ed.), Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker (Springer 2004) pp.213-240.

(See here for a complete listing and links to papers.)

His work on quantum information theory is forthcoming in an OUP monograph Quantum Information Theory  and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

The Fellowship: Interviewed

The Magic of Metaphysics

Click here to read an interview with Professor Timpson by Olivia Gordon, from Oxford Today

Email

[email protected]

Links

Homepage: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~bras2317

Philosophy of Physics Research Group: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ppox

Faculty of Philosophy: http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Undergraduate study in Philosophy: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/courses/philosophy.html