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I want to help spark new technologies, says David Harding, who is donating 拢20 million to 鈥渢he physics of sustainability鈥�

Your donation is going to the University of Cambridge鈥檚 Cavendish Laboratory, 鈥�. What exactly is this?

It means developing materials to help a 9-billion-strong future human race live in harmony with the planet. You could call it the physics of materials, but sustainability sounds more catchy.

How could these new materials help us live sustainably?

One example is improving renewable power generation by making solar cells from commonly occurring elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Solar cells are currently made of cadmium telluride, but cadmium is terribly poisonous and tellurium is terribly rare, so in terms of solving humanity鈥檚 energy problem, it might not be the final answer. If you could make a material from common elements, even if it was very inefficient, then you would be well on the way. You might express scepticism that this could be done 鈥� then I鈥檇 point you to chlorophyll.

What other areas are important?

Energy storage. If you could find a substance that could store energy efficiently, then you could do away with the need to have a fixed-line power grid in Africa and India, in the same way that we鈥檙e never going to need a fixed-wire phone network in Africa due to the rise of the mobile phone.

As an undergraduate, you specialised in theoretical physics. Do you now think practical physics is more important?

It seems to me that cosmology and particle physics have been well funded. Look at the Large Hadron Collider. I love the LHC and don鈥檛 begrudge it a penny. In fact, I think we should spend more money on it. But the success of something like that does tend to orphan other areas.

It sounds like you favour a blue-skies approach to research.

Definitely. Why? Because I can afford to take that risk. In a way it is almost irresponsible for governments to put money into things that are long shots in terms of discovery. I wanted to give researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory more freedom to take risks, to pursue wild ideas. I鈥檓 sure that was the spirit that won the Cavendish its 29 Nobel prizes.

You鈥檙e an advocate of applying the scientific approach to markets. What does this entail?

It means the techniques we use are based on the scientific method. We analyse massive volumes of noisy data from the markets, trying to find patterns that we can 鈥渂et鈥� on. I would say we have considerable humility compared with most participants in the financial markets, who create elaborate stories. We know that we know almost nothing, but the 鈥渁lmost nothing鈥� we know isn鈥檛 completely nothing, and we only bet on that. It鈥檚 a bit like a scientific experiment, because quite often we fail. But overall we make more money than we lose, otherwise I wouldn鈥檛 have 拢20 million to give away!