Ian Hutchinson

His full name is Ian Horner Hutchinson; he was born in 1951 and is a plasma physics specialist.⁠[1]

After a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Cambridge, he pursued a PhD in engineering physics at the Australian National University.⁠[2]

In 1976 he received his PhD there with the thesis “The evolution of a Tokamak discharge.”⁠[3]

The same year he published a paper in Physical Review Letters reporting a magnetic-probe investigation of the disruptive instability in the LT-3 tokamak.⁠[4]

His dissertation on plasma instabilities brought him to the attention of Ronald Parker, who was building MIT’s Alcator tokamak program; in 1976 he joined the group and spent three years there as a research scientist.⁠[5]

He then worked on the Reversed Field Pinch configuration at the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, measuring the structure of magnetic turbulence and showing that it could explain energy transport; in 1983 he returned to MIT as a member of the Nuclear Engineering department faculty.⁠[6]

His book Principles of Plasma Diagnostics was published in 1987.⁠[1]

He directed the Alcator project from 1987 to 2003 and headed MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering from 2003 to 2009.⁠[6]

Alcator C-Mod was the third high-magnetic-field tokamak built and operated at MIT; Ron Parker led its design phase, and Hutchinson led its construction and its first 10 years of operation through 2003.⁠[7]

On February 3, 1998, he released version 1.1 of TtH, a TeX-to-HTML translator that renders LaTeX and Plain TeX mathematics as HTML rather than images; it was free for non-commercial use, with a commercial version able to split files by chapter or section.⁠[8]

He served as editor in chief of the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion and as 2008 chairman of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society; he is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics.⁠[4]

In July 2002 Cambridge University Press published the book’s second edition; in its preface he wrote that his aim was to keep the original emphasis on the physical principles of plasma measurement and its accessible teaching style while adding the latest techniques and applications.⁠[9]

In June 2003 MIT announced that he would head the Department of Nuclear Engineering from July 1, succeeding Jeffrey Freidberg, who had led it for six years; engineering dean Thomas Magnanti called him an expert on virtually the entire range of fusion-related issues.⁠[10]

By then he had been division head of the Alcator project for almost 16 years; the tokamak, with an annual budget of $19 million, was one of the three major U.S. fusion facilities. He had also won teaching awards including the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching.⁠[10]

On July 30, 2011, Fias Publishing released his 272-page paperback Monopolizing Knowledge.⁠[11]

On December 6, 2011, the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion program hosted him and HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry physicist Lisa RandallLisa RandallLisa Randall is an American theoretical physicist and the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University who works on particle physics and cosmology; with Raman Sundrum she proposed in 1999 models in which a warped extra dimension addresses the hierarchy problem, and she has written popular books including Warped Passages.Open the full entry to discuss the power and limits of science; the event description said his new book separates natural science from scientism, the belief that science is the only source of real knowledge, and holds that fields such as history, law, philosophy and religion also yield legitimate knowledge.⁠[12]

In October 2012 he gave a public lecture at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge titled “Scientism: how much faith should we put in science?” Biologist Jerry Coyne then criticized him on his blog Why Evolution Is True, arguing that knowledge is acquired by empirical observation and testing and questioning how he could establish religious claims as true.⁠[13]

On December 5, 2012, he and Dinesh D’Souza argued against the motion in an Intelligence Squared debate in New York on whether science refutes God, opposing Lawrence Krauss and Michael Shermer; in summation he called the treatment of science as all the real knowledge there is “scientism,” which he said alienates people from science.⁠[14]

Audience polls showed Krauss and Shermer rising from 37 percent to 50 percent and Hutchinson and D’Souza from 34 percent to 38 percent, giving the win to Krauss and Shermer.⁠[14]

From January 23 to 25, 2013, he gave three public lectures at the University of British Columbia, Trinity Western University and Simon Fraser University on scientism and the relationship of science and faith, drawing on Monopolizing Knowledge; the events were co-sponsored by the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation and others.⁠[15]

In February 2013 he joined PennUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry associate professor of philosophy Michael Weisberg at the Penn Veritas Forum on the question “Is there truth beyond science?” before about 1,100 students; he told of his conversion to Christianity as a Cambridge undergraduate and said Christian faith is not irrational.⁠[16]

On October 15, 2015, the National Association of Evangelicals released Leith Anderson’s interview with him, in which he said he regards studying the natural sciences as studying the handiwork of God.⁠[2]

On September 30, 2016, Alcator C-Mod, after 23 years of operation, set a world record of 2.05 atmospheres of plasma pressure for a magnetic confinement device on its final day and then closed.⁠[7]

In April 2017, as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Gordon College, he lectured on “Fusion, Faith and Science,” arguing that Christianity and science are not at war and that the real conflict is between Christianity and scientism.⁠[17]

On April 6 of that year he spoke at the Veritas Forum at Johns Hopkins University on “Does Science Lead to Atheism?”, arguing that belief in a God who put in place and upholds the laws of physics is not refuted by science.⁠[18]

In 2018 InterVarsity Press published his Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles? An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science.⁠[19]

The book collects his answers to more than 200 questions from Veritas Forum sessions, covering science and scientism, intelligent design, miracles and the problem of evil; reviewing it, University of Otago emeritus professor D. Gareth Jones praised its clarity but noted that it says little about biomedicine and bioethics.⁠[20]

In May 2018 he and David M. Malaspina published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters analyzing data from the ARTEMIS satellites orbiting the Moon, finding electron holes highly concentrated in the wake of the solar wind flowing past the Moon, in agreement with theoretical prediction.⁠[21]

He appeared on episode 112 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a nuclear engineer and plasma physicist at MIT; topics included fusion energy, nuclear weapons, existential risks, his personal journey in religion, scientism and atheism, suffering, artificial general intelligence and consciousness.⁠[22]

On October 17, 2022, AIP Publishing named him recipient of the 2022 Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasma Physics, worth $5,000 and presented with the APS Division of Plasma Physics, for his paper “Electron holes in phase space: What they are and why they matter.”⁠[23]

In the announcement he said he became interested in electron holes while clarifying how electric probe measurements of flowing plasmas work, as simulations showed holes were responsible for much of what happens in a probe’s wake.⁠[23]

After his 40th year on the MIT faculty he stepped back from teaching but continued research on topics such as ion holes; married for 48 years, he has four grandsons, sings in two choirs and enjoys fly fishing.⁠[5]

As of October 2026 he is professor emeritus of nuclear science and engineering at MIT; he describes three long-running threads of his work: achieving controlled fusion at far lower cost with very high magnetic fields, a multidimensional theory of electron holes, and Christian perspectives on science, including his critique of scientism.⁠[24]

His TtH program is still distributed on CRAN as the R package tth, updated to version 4.16-1 on July 31, 2026, and maintained by Achim Zeileis.⁠[25]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[24]