He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Retford, then Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

He was on the faculty of Lancaster University from 1969 to 1999, rising from Lecturer to Professor of History of Science.

With Geoffrey Cantor he gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 1995.

T Dixon, G N Cantor and S Pumfrey) 2010 and Rethinking History, Science and Religion: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle (ed.

B Lightman) 2019 Other publications number more than one hundred journal articles and book chapters including contributions to:The Cambridge Companion to Darwin; The Cambridge Companion to the "Origin of Species"; The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science; The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century British Philosophy; The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible; The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (editorial consultant)