Ian Walker was born in Wardle, near Rochdale, England. The hospital in which this took place was a former workhouse, although sadly this has done nothing to give his life an air of Dickensian romance.

Over the years he has variously lived in Rochdale; Padiham, near Burnley (he did most of his growing up here); York; Leipzig, Germany, and Bath, which isn't as nice as everybody thinks it is. He now lives in Salisbury.

Information about Ian's teaching and research work and a curriculum vitae can be found on his work page.

Incidentally, the picture above is from the annual Bath Taps into Science festival. It's Ian showing a group of schoolchildren something interesting about visual illusions with the aid of a flying plastic lion. Well, someone has to do it...

In his spare time Ian enjoys various things, including cycling, hiking, Belgian beer, and photography. The cycling has a worrying tendency to take on epic proportions. In 1999 he cycled 3600 kilometres from York to Constanta (on the Romanian Black Sea coast) and he is soon off to cycle from John o'Groats to Land's End. You can read about Ian's cycling by clicking the link.

He also plays the guitar with an alarming lack of skill, but overcame this handicap to play and sing for many years in a wonderfully silly band called Fat Twins (there were three of them). The other two members, Rick Ormerod and Andy Molloy, both have respectable jobs these days, so Ian thinks it's quite amusing to mention them here.