James Dyson

Dyson grew up in Norfolk, England, in the 1950s and boarded at Gresham’s School, where his father taught. After his father died at the age of 43, the then headmaster gave him a bursary so that he could continue his studies for free. Recalling his childhood, he said money was unimportant, and that the freedom of the countryside, the seaside, and the sand dunes was the greater gift.⁠[1][2][2][1]

He studied art at school and went on to art college in London, where the principal suggested he go into design. He then entered the Royal College of Art, where he was introduced to engineering under the guidance of Tony Hunt and was influenced by the American architect and designer Buckminster Fuller, coming to believe that the beauty of an engineered structure comes from the engineering itself rather than its styling.⁠[1][3][3][1][1]

Inspired by this, Dyson helped design the Sea Truck, a high-speed boat built for beach landings.⁠[1]

In 1974, Dyson launched his first invention of his own: the Ballbarrow, a wheelbarrow that used a large plastic ball in place of a wheel, making it easier to fill, empty, and maneuver; it was a commercial success, but in building the business he lost control of the company, which was sold by outside investors against his wishes. The experience left him determined not to repeat it with his next invention.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 1978, dissatisfied that the bag of his new Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner clogged and lost suction, Dyson noticed that a local sawmill used cyclone technology to separate sawdust from the air and conceived of applying the principle to a household vacuum cleaner. He removed the bag, built a rough cyclone device out of cardboard, and pushed it around the room to test it, and it worked.⁠[4][4][4][1]

Over the next five years, Dyson built 5,127 prototypes before arriving at what became the DC01, 5,126 of which did not work. At one point he owed his bank more than £1 million; turning a working prototype into a commercial product took about another ten years and nearly bankrupted him. He said he had always been heavily in debt, but the bank stood by him.⁠[4][5][1][1][1]

All the major vacuum cleaner manufacturers declined to license his design. In 1993, the first vacuum cleaner sold under the Dyson brand was launched in the UK, and it soon became the best-selling vacuum cleaner in the country.⁠[5][5][1]

Dyson products were made in Wiltshire until 2002, when vacuum cleaner production moved to Malaysia, a move that was widely criticized at the time but proved commercially successful. That same year, Dyson set up the James Dyson Foundation to challenge misconceptions about engineering and address the UK’s shortage of engineers; the foundation launched in the United States in 2011 and later expanded to Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and the Philippines.⁠[1][1][4][4]

In 2010, Dyson wrote the report Ingenious Britain for the Conservative Party, calling on the government to reawaken Britain’s creativity and competitive spirit. On December 15 of that year, the Royal College of Art announced that Dyson, a member of its Council since 1998, would succeed Terence Conran as Provost for a five-year term beginning August 1, 2011.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

In the New Year Honours list published on December 30, 2015, Dyson was appointed to the Order of Merit for his achievements in industrial design; the Order has no more than 24 living members at any one time, and the award is conferred at the Queen’s personal discretion. He said the honor was just as much a recognition of the engineers and scientists he worked with.⁠[6][6][6][6]

In 2016, Dyson launched an electric car project, planning to invest more than £2 billion, half in building the car and half in battery development. In October 2018, the company chose Singapore as the site for its electric car factory, with the first vehicles scheduled to roll off the line in 2021, citing the local engineering talent and supply chains and saying the decision had nothing to do with Brexit. In October 2019, in an email to all employees, Dyson announced that the project had been abandoned, saying its engineers had built a “fantastic electric car” but that it was not commercially viable and the company had been unable to find a buyer for the project; the division had 500 employees in the UK.⁠[7][7][8][8][8][8][7][7][7]

Ahead of the June 2016 Brexit referendum, Dyson publicly supported Britain leaving the European Union, calling the idea that no one would trade with Britain if it left the EU “absolute cobblers,” arguing that Britain would create more wealth and jobs outside the EU, and criticizing the EU’s free movement of people for failing to let him recruit the talent he needed. The Remain campaign countered that he had once wanted the UK to join the euro, saying “he was wrong then and he is wrong now.”⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

In September 2016, Dyson announced the founding of a new university in Malmesbury, the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, which opened in 2017 and awards engineering degrees. In March 2017, the company announced a second research and development campus on a 517-acre former Ministry of Defence site at Hullavington, planning to grow its workforce to about 7,000 within five or six years; Dyson said the referendum result was only a “minor event” for the company.⁠[10][1][10][10][10]

On November 8, 2018, after four years of litigation, the EU General Court found in Dyson’s favor and annulled the EU’s energy labeling regulations for vacuum cleaners. Dyson argued that the tests measured vacuum cleaners only when empty, favoring competing bagged products and failing to reflect how suction drops in real use as the bag fills.⁠[11][11][11][11]

On January 22, 2019, Dyson announced that it was moving its headquarters from Malmesbury in Wiltshire to Singapore, with only two executives, the chief financial officer and the chief legal officer, relocating and no impact on its roughly 4,000 employees in the UK. Chief executive Jim Rowan said the move had nothing to do with Brexit or tax but was about seizing growth opportunities in Asia. Because Dyson himself had backed Brexit, the decision led to accusations of “hypocrisy”; he later said the company had moved to Asia because its British suppliers did not want to expand with it.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][1][1]

In March 2020, the Department of Health feared that COVID-19 patients in England would need as many as 20,000 additional ventilators, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is understood to have called Dyson on March 13 to ask him to take part; the company answered the call but was ultimately not asked to supply ventilators to the NHS. Dyson had sought assurances from the Treasury that employees coming to the UK to work on the project would face no additional tax, and when he received no response he texted the prime minister directly; Johnson replied that then Chancellor Rishi Sunak “says it is fixed.” After the texts were made public in April 2021, the Labour Party called for an investigation, and Johnson said he made “no apology” for his efforts to secure ventilators.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13][13]

In April 2021, filings for Dyson’s companies listed him as living primarily in the UK, indicating that he had moved his main residence back from Singapore to the UK. A company spokesman declined to comment on his residence and tax status, saying that Singapore remained Dyson’s global headquarters.⁠[14][14][14][14]

In November 2023, Dyson pledged £35 million to his former school, Gresham’s, to buy and redevelop Holt Hall, an outdoor education center sold off by Norfolk County Council, with plans to turn it into a prep school and run an outreach program for local schools; he had previously donated £18.75 million to the school for a new building. He said he was “forever grateful for the generosity” the school had shown him.⁠[2][2][2][2]

Dyson sued Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mirror, for libel over a January 2022 column criticizing him for backing Brexit and then moving his company’s headquarters to Singapore. In court, Dyson called the article a personal attack on all that he had achieved in his lifetime. On December 1, 2023, Mr Justice Jay of the High Court dismissed the claims, finding that he could not show financial loss or harm to his philanthropic work as a result of the article; the publisher said the ruling upheld “the right of columnists” to express opinions.⁠[15][15][15][15][15][15][15]

On July 9, 2024, the Dyson company announced a global restructuring, planning to cut about a third of its UK workforce (which then numbered about 3,500). Chief executive Hanno Kirner said the company needed to be more “entrepreneurial and agile” and that this was a business decision, not a political one; the UK would remain a major research and development base and the home of the Dyson Institute, which then had 160 undergraduate engineers. In 2023, James Dyson had described the UK’s policies as “woeful.”⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16]

On September 3, 2024, Queen Camilla opened the Dyson Cancer Centre at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, which cost more than £50 million, with £40 million in government funding and a £4 million donation from the James Dyson Foundation. Dyson had previously described the hospital’s old cancer department as outdated and “not fit for purpose.”⁠[17][17][17]

In 2023, Dyson announced a £6 million donation through the company’s charitable arm to a primary school in Malmesbury to build a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) center and increase capacity from 420 to 630 pupils; plans for the expansion were submitted in October 2025. In July 2026, he gave a further £1.8 million, bringing his total donation to the school to £7.8 million, with the new facilities expected to open in September 2027.⁠[18][18][18][19][19]

On December 7, 2025, David Senra’s eponymous podcast released an episode of his conversation with Dyson.⁠[20][20]

James Dyson Foundation: Official website: https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]