Professor Graham Machin, FRS, FREng, BSc (Hons), DSc, DPhil (Oxon), FInstP, HonFInstMC, FIPEM, CEng, CPhys is a senior NPL fellow in thermometry. His team has made world-leading contributions to the redefinition of the kelvin (K), thermodynamic temperature measurement and the development of high-temperature fixed points as next-generation temperature standards.
In addition, his team has made numerous contributions to solving thermometry problems in harsh environments as diverse as aerospace, space, nuclear decommissioning and medical. They are working towards developing traceable surface thermometry, in-situ validation and no-drift sensing thermometry techniques to facilitate autonomous production and Industry 4.0. Graham also has active research in photonic and quantum thermometry and is the NPL science lead for nuclear decommissioning metrology.
As an acknowledged world leader in thermometry, Graham and his team have made significant contributions to the science of temperature measurement. Recent highlights include:
Graham joined the NPL Temperature and Humidity Group in 1991 after completing his DPhil at the University of Oxford on Cataclysmic variables in globular clusters and low-mass X-ray binaries. He has published over 280 papers and has given numerous plenary and keynote lectures worldwide.
Graham is the NPL representative on the BIPM Consultative Committee for Thermometry (CCT), chair of the CCT Working Group for Non-Contact Thermometry and member of the CCT Working Group on Strategy Planning. He is a past chair of the EURAMET Technical Committee of Thermometry (TC-T) (2014–2018) and continues to serve on the TC-T Strategy Group. He has served on the EPSRC Physical Sciences Advisory Team (2014–2017), on the council of the Institute of Measurement and Control (InstMC) (2013–2015) and was its President (2018–2019).
He has also served on numerous international programme committees, including the IMEKO World Congress 2018, Tempmeko/TempBeijing 2019, Tempmeko 2025 and the decennial International Temperature Symposium (US, 2023), where he gave the opening plenary “James Schooley Memorial” address.
Graham holds a visiting professorship in Physics at Strathclyde University and honorary professorships at the University of Birmingham and the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow.
In 2012, he received the InstMC Callendar Medal for improvements in “the state of the art” in temperature measurement; and in 2015, a DSc from the University of Birmingham for Improvements in Temperature Measurement. In 2017, Graham was awarded a Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Fellowship and in 2019 he was elected Honorary Scientist of the CAS and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2021, he was awarded the InstMC Sir Harold Hartley Medal for “outstanding contributions to the technology of measurement and control”. In 2022, his team received the joint InstMC/WCSIM Cornish Award for outstanding achievement in building scientific instruments. He was elected Honorary Fellow of InstMC in 2024 in recognition of his long-standing and leading contributions to thermometry. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the UK’s National Science Academy, the Royal Society: View profile.
He supports the wider science community through serving on the editorial board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition Planning Committee, the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships Scheme Steering Group and the UK Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. Finally, he has a keen interest in science outreach, especially to remote communities.