Roger Ronald Highfield (born 1958 in Griffithstown, Wales) is an author, science journalist, broadcaster and Science Director at the Science Museum Group.
Highfield was educated at Chase Side Primary School in Enfield and Christ's Hospital in Horsham. He studied Chemistry at Pembroke College, Oxford and was awarded a Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1980 followed by a Doctor of Philosophy for research on neutron scattering from chemical species.
During his research career, he was the first to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble while he was working at the Institut Laue Langevin.
Highfield served as the science editor of The Daily Telegraph for more than 20 years. During that time he set up a long running science writing award for young people, a photography competition, the 'scientists meet the media' party, and organised mass experiments from 1994 with BBC's Tomorrow's World, called Live Lab and Megalab, such as the 'Truth Test' with Richard Wiseman.
He was the editor for the British magazine New Scientist from 2008 to 2011, where he redesigned the magazine and introduced new sections, notably Aperture and Instant Expert.
, Highfield became the director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group.
In 2012, he published the results of a mass intelligence test with Adrian Owen.
In 2016 he launched a critique of big data in biology with Ed Dougherty of Texas A&M and Peter Coveney.
In 2019, Highfield became the science director at the Science Museum Group. For the group, he wrote a series of long-form blogs about the science of COVID-19 and in 2021 organised a special COVID-19 issue of the Royal Society journal Interface Focus.
Highfield is a visiting professor of Public Engagement at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. He is also a visiting professor of Public Engagement at the Department of Chemistry at UCL and a member of the Medical Research Council. In April 2023, he was made the honorary president of the Association of British Science Writers, taking over from the veteran BBC correspondent Pallab Ghosh.
Highfield has written and co-authored ten popular science books, and edited two written by Craig Venter, including:
The Mind Readers (2014). His account of the efforts to communicate with brain damaged patients that suffer disorders of consciousness was reproduced in other media worldwide, such as Gizmodo, The Week, The Independent and Pacific Standard. He has also written longer articles for Aeon, and Wired.
Highfield is a member of the Longitude Committee.
Highfield wrote for a time for Newsweek. and made occasional contributions to The Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, The Guardian and Aeon magazine.
He has been listed on the Evening Standard Progress 1000 in 2012 and 2016.
In 2012, Highfield gave the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture, on Heroes of Science, at the Royal Society.
In 2020, Highfield was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
Highfield was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to public engagement with science.
In 2024, Highfield was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Highfield met his wife, Julia Brookes, at the University of Oxford. They married in 1992 and have one son and one daughter.