Nicholas Manton received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1978. Following postdoctoral positions at the Ecole Normale in Paris, M.I.T. and UC Santa Barbara, he returned to Cambridge and is now Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and currently head of the department's High Energy Physics group. He is a Fellow of St John's College. He introduced and helped develop the method of modelling topological soliton dynamics by geodesic motion on soliton moduli spaces.