Sir David is Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University and Director of Research (Chemical Physics) at Cambridge University. He served as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Office of Science and Technology from October 2000 until December 2007.
After an early career at the University of Witwatersrand, Imperial College and the University of East Anglia, he became the Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool in 1974. From 1988-2005 he held the position of 1920 Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and was Head of the University Chemistry Department from 1993-2000. He was also Master of Downing College from 1995 until January 2000.
Sir David chairs a number of committees including: the Chief Scientific Adviser's Committee (CSAC); the Global Science and Innovation Forum (GSIF); and co-chaired the Energy Research Partnership (ERP) and the Council for Science and Technology. He was heavily involved in producing the UK's ten-year Science and Innovation Framework, 2004-2014. He ran the Government's Foresight Programme, which aims to provide challenging visions of the future, to ensure effective strategies now.
Sir David has published over 450 papers in scientific journals. In 2002 he delivered the Ninth Zuckerman Lecture, on "The Science of Climate Change: Adapt, Mitigate or Ignore?" at The Royal Society. He subsequently delivered the Greenpeace Business Lecture "Global Warming, the science of climate change - the imperatives for action" in 2004 and the Magna Carta Lecture to the Australian Parliament in 2005.
He published "The Scientific Impact of Nations" in Nature 430, 311 (2004) and "Climate Change: the science and the policy" in the Journal of Applied Ecology 42, 779-783 (2005).