John Evans holds a BSc (Imperial College) and PhD (University of Cambridge) in Chemistry. Following further periods of research at Princeton University and Cambridge he moved to the University of Southampton in 1976 as a Royal Society Pickering Research Fellow. He became Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 1990. There he has served as Head of Teaching, Head of Department and Dean of Science. He was also Science Program Advisor at the Diamond Light Source
|(2002-2007) and his research has centred on studying catalysts in situ. He was also an editor of the Oxford Chemistry Primer series.