Peter William Atkins (born 1940) is a Fellow and professor of chemistry at Lincoln College in the University of Oxford. He is a prolific writer of successful chemistry textbooks, particularly Atkins' Physical Chemistry (ISBN 0198792859) and Inorganic Chemistry (ISBN 019850330X), two of the world's most popular introductory chemistry textbooks. Atkins is also the author of a number of popular science works, including Why Chemical Reactions Happen, Atkins' Molecules, and Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science. Atkins has also written and spoken on issues of humanism, atheism, and what he sees as the incompatibility between science and religion.

Peter Atkins studied chemistry at the University of Leicester, obtaining a bachelor's degree in chemistry and in 1964 a Ph.D for research into electron-spin resonance. In 1969 he won the Royal Society of Chemistry's Meldola Medal. Atkins then taught physical chemistry at UCLA and later at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he is the SmithKline Beecham Fellow in inorganic chemistry.

Atkins married fellow scientist Susan Greenfield (later Baroness Greenfield) in 1990. The couple divorced in 2003.

External links

• Atkins' page at Lincoln College
• Transcript of debate with theist William Lane Craig