Our guest speaker will be Doug Gurr, who for the past six years has been the director of the Natural History Museum.

Doug was born in Leeds in 1964 to parents from New Zealand. After studies in Mathematics at Cambridge and Computing at Edinburgh (where he received a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science), he taught maths and computing at the Aarhus University in Denmark; did various minor civil service jobs for John Majors government; worked for the consultancy firm McKinsey for six years and eventually became a partner; founded and then sold online grocery wholesaler Blueheath; worked as development director for Asda for almost five years; and joined Amazon in 2011. At Amazon he worked as China country manager from 2014 to 2016 and UK country manager from 2016 to 2020, when he was appointed director of the Natural History Museum.

In parallel with this, he was chair of the Science Museum Group of national museums 2010-2014; chair of the board of trustees of the British Heart Foundation 2015-2022; chair of the board of trustees of The Alan Turing Institute 2022-2026; and has been chair of the government’s Competition and Markets Authority since February 2026, after having been interim chair since January 2025.

In his spare time he is also a keen sportsman. He is a former Scottish international triathlete, 12 times Ironman, ski mountaineer with over 20 first ascents, and enthusiastic mountain runner.

After a gruelling ski mountaineer descent in 2007, from Greenland’s highest peak, Gunnbjørn Fjeld, he and his wife spent a night fighting off a polar bear who tried to enter their base camp tent. For hours, they kept it at bay by firing flares and clanging shovels and ice picks. When dawn arrived, they found their tent shredded and the polar bear had even taken a bit out of Doug’s sleeping bag!

There will be drinks in the foyer afterwards, to which all are welcome.