Carlos Silvestre Frenk (born 27 October 1951) is a Mexican-British cosmologist and the Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University. His main interests lie in the fields of cosmology, galaxy formation and computer simulations of cosmic structure formation. Early life and education Carlos Frenk was born in Mexico City, Mexico and is the eldest son of six siblings. His father is a German Jewish doctor who emigrated from Germany at the age of 7, fleeing persecution in the lead up to World War II. His mother is a Mexican–Spanish pianist. Frenk studied engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but later changed to Theoretical Physics, earning an undergraduate degree in 1976. Later that year he secured a British Council Fellowship and enrolled at the University of Cambridge to read Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, which he was awarded in 1977. He remained at Cambridge for doctoral studies under the supervision of Bernard J. T. Jones and was awarded a PhD in astronomy in 1981. Career and research Following an endowment from Peter Ogden in 2001, Frenk became the inaugural Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University and continues to hold this position today. He is also co-Principal Investigator of the Virgo Consortium, alongside Simon White. Frenk became the Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology when it was established in 2001. He held this post until 2020 when he was succeeded by Shaun Cole. Awards and honours He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2004 and is a member of the Royal Society's Council. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2014. Other awards and honours include: 2021 Rumford Medal 2020 Dirac Medal and Prize, Institute of Physics 2020 Clarivate Citation Laureate in Physics 2017 Max Born Prize of the German Physical Society 2014 Gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 2013 Alexander von Humboldt Research Award 2013 Lansdowne Visitor, University of Victoria, Canada 2013 The Biermann Lectures, Max Planck Society 2011 Gruber Prize in Cosmology ($500,000, jointly with Marc Davis, George Efstathiou, Simon White) 2010 Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize, Institute of Physics 2010 George Darwin Lectureship, Royal Astronomical Society 2007 Daniel Chalonge medal, Observatoire de Paris 2006 Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award 2006 The Withrow lecture, Royal Astronomical Society 2004 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) 2004 Ranked 2nd most cited author in