Geoffrey Grimmett was educated at Oxford University before moving in 1976 to Bristol University for his first tenured post. After sixteen wonderful years in Bristol, he moved in 1992 to the Statistical Laboratory of Cambridge University as Professor of Mathematical Statistics. Cambridge remains his base for pursuing probability theory and the mathematics of disordered systems. He resigned his fellowship of Churchill College on being elected to the Mastership of Downing College on 1 October 2013. He was Chair of the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research from 2020-2023.

His interest in disordered physical systems, including percolation and related processes, was sparked through interaction with John Hammersley, nurtured by Dominic Welsh, and confirmed through the intervention of Harry Kesten.

He has written numerous research articles in probability theory and statistical mechanics, as well as three research books entitled Percolation (1999), The Random-Cluster Model (2006), and Probability on Graphs (2010). With David Stirzaker and Dominic Welsh respectively, he has co-authored two successful textbooks on probability and random processes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In his spare time, he plays the harpsichord badly, and he travels with family and friends to quiet places of extraordinary beauty, high and low.

by Stuart Pearson Wright, 2015