[3] He was born in Dorchester, Dorset, son of David Briggs,[2] a classics teacher at Bryanston School Dorset, and later headmaster of King's College School Cambridge, and Mary (née Lormer),[2] whose former maths pupils include Sir Timothy Gowers and Sir Andrew Wiles.

[2] From 1976 to 1979 he studied theology at Ridley Hall[2] and Queens' College, Cambridge,[2] where he won the Chase Prize for Greek.

Since 2010 he has also been responsible for the preparation and evaluation of grant proposals to Templeton World Charity Foundation which serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.

[3] His scientific research since taking up the Chair of Nanomaterials in 2002 has concentrated on materials with potential for building quantum computers.

[6] Having established the key necessary phenomena in ensembles of large numbers of spins, since 2013 he has worked on harnessing quantum properties in devices.