Take a look at Ian Goldin's jam-packed CV and you'll see why he was appointed the first Director of Oxford University's new think tank-cum-research center, the 21st Century School, later renamed the Oxford Martin School: Goldin battled apartheid in his native South Africa, served as a development adviser to Nelson Mandela and, as the VP of the World Bank, led collaborations with the UN on global development strategy. He is the author of 19 books, including Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped our World and Will Define our Future (Princeton University Press, 2011), Divided Nations: Why global governance is failing and what we can do about it (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Butterfly Defect: How globalization creates systemic risks, and what to do about it (Princeton University Press, 2014).

At Oxford Martin School, with a diverse brigade of over 200 top researchers from the hard and social sciences, Goldin is bringing fresh thinking to bear on the big, looming issues of the next 100 years: climate change, disruptive technological advancements, aging, bio-ethics, infectious disease, poverty, political conflict.