Donald Braben
Donald W. Braben was a British author and Honorary Professor in the Office of the Vice-Provost, University College London.
Life
Braben was educated at the University of Liverpool where he was awarded a PhD in 1962 for work on Isotopes of sodium. He gained a pilot licence with the University [Air Squadron], which he maintained throughout his life.At university he married Shirley, a fellow PhD; they later had three children. Braben died in 2025, aged 89.
Research
Braben was a well-known critic of peer review and an advocate of blue skies research, scientific freedom and the culture of science. Braben was the author of To Be a Scientist: The Spirit of Adventure in Science and Technology,, Pioneering Research: A Risk Worth Taking ''Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilization, and Promoting the Planck Club: How defiant youth, irreverent researchers and liberated universities can foster prosperity indefinitely. Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilisation'' was republished by Stripe Press in 2020 with a new Introduction.Braben tried to persuade universities to recreate the success he had with the BP-sponsored Venture Research Unit, and later at University College London from 2009. Venture Research is research that has a good chance of radically changing the way we think in an important field and is selected in face-to-face discussion.