On her appointment in Oxford, Levin explained: ‘Artists realise that fodder for ingenuity can sometimes better be found out of the art world by hanging around laboratories, hospitals, parliament or museum skips, looking for inspiration in the form of ideas, images and discarded objects. Moving in and out of relatively impassive establishments, artists extend themselves and their audiences by acts of trespass. Rarely, if ever, does it flow the other way. In particular, rarely does the scientist trespass into the art world.’

Levin moved to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University as a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council Advanced Fellow four years ago before coming to Oxford. She holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked previously at Sussex University, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Janna’s scientific work centres on cosmology, infinity, chaos and black holes, and in 2002 her first book How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The book is about isolation, mathematics and infinity. It is part personal diary written as a series of unsent letters home and part scientific exposition.

Organised by the Ruskin School of Art and supported by funding from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.