These are good times for science. This stereotypically nerdy subject has been elevated out of the labs and on to primetime TV, national radio stations and newspaper front pages.

Scientists are no longer fusty “boffins” but “rock stars” with Twitter accounts followed by millions.

Comedians have swapped drinking anecdotes for jokes about atoms and students are reportedly falling over themselves to sign up for science degrees.

It’s official – science is cool. But then, scientists knew that all along.

“I remember discovering physics as a teenager and being blown away by it,” says Jim Al-Khalili. “It was the subject where you could ask all the big questions– where does the universe come from? Does it go on forever?

What does time mean?”

If science is the new rock ’n’ roll, Al-Khalili is surely one of The Beatles, part of the current vanguard of popular scientists successfully translating complex subjects such as quantum mechanics into informative, fascinating and accessible output.

Professor of theoretical physics at Surrey University, the 41-year-old began publishing popular science books alongside his research and teaching and quickly developed a following for his straightforward style and friendly tone.

He has since made more than a dozen TV documentaries including the three-part Atom and Shock And Awe; The Story Of Electricity. A new series of The Life Scientific, in which he interviews the great and good of modern science, has recently begun on Radio 4 and he is much in demand at science festivals including Brighton’s, ongoing throughout the city this month.

Needless to say, he’s delighted to be part of science’s popular revival, if wary of attributing too much to the so-called “Brian Cox effect”. Aside from the floppy-haired Mancunian’s popularity with Al-Khalili’s wife – “‘Ah,’ she said to me once, ‘Here comes my second favourite TV physicist’” – he believes there are other factors that have contributed, including the BBC focus on science programming, which has allowed a show like The Life Scientific to inhabit a prime 9am slot and subjects such as the Higgs Boson and cognitive psychology to be discussed over breakfast.

Scientists too are becoming more aware of the value of communicating their ideas to non-academic audiences. Those who appeared on TV and wrote newspaper columns were once regarded as “media tarts”, says Al-Khalili, “It was seen as something a ‘serious’ scientist wouldn’t dirty their hands with. But that’s changing and it’s become much more respectable.

Not everyone is cut out for direct public engagement but outreach is becoming another strand of what academics do.”

He puts any grumblings about Cox’s popularity down to jealousy: “Brian is a superstar who makes a very good living from science, whereas the average academic is contending with research meetings and marking exams and probably sees Brian’s life as exotic and fascinating.”

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not science that brings Al-Khalili to the Brighton Science Festival but his recent appointment as president of the British Humanist Association, which promotes the belief in humanity’s potential to do good for its own sake.

He has been invited to speak at the next Brighton meeting of the Sunday Assembly – a national non-denominational movement whose values chime with those of humanism in providing weekly gatherings where people can come together to “seek warmth and togetherness without the trappings of magic and myth”.

Humanism is “relatively new” to Al-Khalili – like many, he had thought it was mainly about people who didn’t want religious weddings or funerals. However, he has identified as an atheist since his school days growing up in Iraq. While his devout Christian mother and Shia Muslim father were careful not to force their views on their children, by his teens he had become sceptical and reached the conclusion that they couldn’t both be right; “Therefore it must all be wrong.” But he considers himself “an accommodationist” when it comes to organised religion.

In sharp contrast to his friend Richard Dawkins, whose strident atheism has proved divisive, he prefers a live-andlet- live approach. It’s hard to imagine Dawkins interviewing Prof Robert Winston, as Al-Khalili did recently, and not even mentioning the apparent conflict between the geneticist’s work and his religious faith. But he jokes that he is “good cop” to Dawkins’ “bad” when it comes to matters of secularism.

“I see it as being like a dinner party.

You go to these things and you sit next to someone who has really divergent views to you and you talk to them and it’s fascinating, and you try to put yourself in their position.”

Does he see humanism as something different to atheism? “Yes I do. I know it’s aimed at people who aren’t religious but actually it has nothing to do with whether you’re religious or not.

A Christian might say humanist values – empathy, kindness – are Christian values and I might think they’ve hijacked them from humanism but that doesn’t mean a Christian can’t be a humanist.”

We return to the Sunday Assembly; some have argued that in aping some of its conventions organisers risk turning atheism into a new religion.

Typically, Al-Khalili is staying out of that debate. “Personally I have no problem with [the Sunday assembly].

One of the good things about organised religion is that it does provide social cohesion and a network for people to help each other and I don’t see why all that should be restricted to those who believe in a higher being.”

But just when it seems there’s nothing that can rattle the cage of this polite and diplomatic scientist, I mention the writer Alain de Botton, whose book Religion For Atheists made very similar points.

“Oh dear,” he says. “I worry when people accuse me of aligning myself with Alain de Botton.

He’s very reasonable but...

well, I’m not a fan.”

*Jim Al-Khalili is guest speaker at the Sunday Assembly in St Andrews Church, Waterloo Street, Hove, tomorrow (Sunday, March 2) as part of Brighton Science Festival.

Visit www.brighton science.com.

*The Life Scientific is on Radio 4 at 9am every Tuesday.