He is currently Professor of Physics at George Washington University in Washington D.C. where he heads up a new initiative in Complexity and Data Science which combines cross-disciplinary fundamental research with data science, with a view to resolving complex real-world problems.
[1] He presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures "Arrows of time" on BBC TV in 1999.
He was awarded a scholarship to attend Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar where he received his PhD in 1989.
Following his PhD, he was first appointed as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, then as a Professor at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota.
While a student at school and university, Johnson was a sax player with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) in the U.K. and toured extensively with them.