His parents emigrated from the Punjab in India to Britain in 1950. He grew up in Wellington, Somerset, and then went to Imperial College London, where he studied physics, before completing a PhD in particle physics at Cambridge University and at CERN, Geneva.

In 1990, he joined the BBC's Science Department, where he was a producer and director in programmes such as Tomorrow's World and Horizon. In 1996 he directed Fermat's Last Theorem, a BAFTA award winning documentary about the world's most notorious mathematical problem. The documentary was also aired in America as part of the NOVA series. The Proof, as it was re-titled, was nominated for an Emmy.

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