Steve Bramwell graduated from Oxford with a degree in Chemistry in 1984, then held positions in Oxford and Grenoble, before joining UCL in 1997. Formerly a Professor of Physical Chemistry, he is now in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL. Alongside his 1997 discovery and naming of of spin ice (with MJ Harris), he is known for his calculation of β = 0.23, a key critical exponent for magnetic films (with PCW Holdsworth, 1993) and a probability distribution named after him (the Bramwell-Holdsworth-Pinton Distribution, 1998). He was awarded  the 2010 Holweck Prize of the Britsh Institue of Physics and the French Societe de Physique,  to recognise his work on model magnets, and he was the co-recipient of the 2012 European Physical Society CMD Europhysics Prize for the discovery of magnetic monopoles in spin ice. His discovery of "magnetricity" in spin ice was reconginsed by the Times Higher Research project of the Year, 2010 and he appeared on The Times's 2010 list of the 100 most important UK scientists. He presented the 2012 Wohlfarth Lecture of the IOP