Barrow obtained his first degree in mathematics and physics from Van Mildert College at the University of Durham in 1974. In 1977, he completed his doctorate in astrophysics at Magdalen College in the University of Oxford under Dennis William Sciama. He did two postdoctoral years in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1981 he joined the University of Sussex and rose to the rank of Professor. In 1999, he became Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and a fellow in Clare Hall at Cambridge University. He is Director of the Millennium Mathematics Project. From 2003—2007 he was Gresham Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, and he has been appointed as Gresham Professor of Geometry from 2008—2011; only one person has previously held two different Gresham chairs. In 2008, the Royal Society awarded him the Faraday Prize.

In addition to having published more than 400 journal articles, Barrow has coauthored (with Frank J. Tipler) The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, a work on the history of the ideas, specifically intelligent design and teleology, as well as a treatise on astrophysics. He has also published 17 books for a general readers, beginning with his 1983 The Left Hand of Creation. His books summarise the state of the affairs of physical questions, often in the form of compendia of a large number of facts assembled from the works of great physicists, such as Paul Dirac and Arthur Eddington.

Barrow's approach to philosophical issues posed by physical cosmology make his books accessible to general readers. For example, Barrow introduced a memorable paradox, which he called "the Groucho Marx Effect" (see Russell-like paradoxes). Here, he quotes Groucho Marx: "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member". Applying this to problems in cosmology, Barrow states: "A universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind capable of understanding it." That is, the better we understand the problem, the more likely it is to be oversimplified. Conversely, the closer we get to a description of reality, the more complex and incomprehensible the description becomes. There would be few if any fields of study in which this paradox does not apply.

Barrow has lectured at 10 Downing Street, Windsor Castle, the Vatican, and to the general public. In 2002, his play Infinities premiered in Milan, played in Valencia, and won the Premi Ubu 2002 Italian Theatre Prize.

He was awarded the 2006 Templeton Prize for "Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities" for his "writings about the relationship between life and the universe, and the nature of human understanding [which] have created new perspectives on questions of ultimate concern to science and religion". He is a member of a United Reformed Church, which he describes as teaching "a traditional deistic picture of the universe".

In English:

1. Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science. ISBN 978-0224075237
2. New Theories of Everything. ISBN 978-0192807212
3. Between Inner Space and Outer Space: Essays on the Science, Art, and Philosophy of the Origin of the Universe
4. Impossibility: Limits of Science and the Science of Limits. ISBN 0-09-977211-6
5. Material Content of the Universe
6. Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being
7. Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity
8. The Artful Universe: The Cosmic Source of Human Creativity
9. The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe
10. The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless
11. The Left Hand of Creation: The Origin and Evolution of the Expanding Universe
12. The Origin of the Universe: To the Edge of Space and Time
13. The Universe That Discovered Itself
14. The World Within the World
15. Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation
16. The Constants of Nature: The Numbers that Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe
17. 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know

In other languages:

1. L'Homme et le Cosmos (in French)
2. Perché il Mondo è Matematico? (in Italian)

Publications available on the Internet

• Chaos in Numberland: the secret life of continued fractions
• Chaos
• Mathematics and Sports
• Connections in Space website and CD Rom on mathematical and artistic aspects of space, with R. Bright, M. Kemp i N. Mee
• Outer space - A Sense of Balance
• Living in a Simulation, 2003.
• Outer Space - Independence Day
• Solution to A Sense of Balance
• Outer Space - Rugby and Relativity
• Solution to Independence Day
• Wagons Roll
• Solution to Rugby and Relativity

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