Peter Atkins left school at fifteen 'for private reasons' and took a job with Monsanto as a lab assistant. He studied for A-levels by himself but failed to take a place at Southampton University before gaining a place, following an interview, at University of Leicester at a week's notice.

Atkins studied chemistry at the University of Leicester, obtaining a bachelor's degree in chemistry, and - in 1964 - a Ph.D. for research into electron spin resonance spectroscopy, and other aspects of theoretical chemistry. In 1969, he won the Royal Society of Chemistry's Meldola Medal. Atkins then taught physical chemistry at the UCLA as a Harkness Fellow[1], and later at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he was a researcher and lecturer until his retirement in 2007.

Atkins married Judith Ann Kearton in 1964 and they had one daughter, Juliet Louise Tiffany (born 1970). The couple divorced in 1983. He later married fellow scientist Susan Greenfield (later Baroness Greenfield) in 1991. The couple divorced in 2005.

Atkins has lectured in quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry courses (up to graduate level) at the University of Oxford. He retired from lecturing at an Undergraduate level in December 2006. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society.

Atkins is a well-known atheist and supporter of many of Richard Dawkins' ideas. He has written and spoken on issues of humanism, atheism, and what he sees as the incompatibility between science and religion. According to Atkins, whereas religion scorns the power of human comprehension, science respects it.

He was the first Senior Member for the Oxford Secular Society and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of The Reason Project, a US-based charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The organisation is led by fellow atheist and author Sam Harris. Atkins has regularly participated in debates with theists such as Alister McGrath, William Lane Craig, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Richard Swinburne.

In December 2006, Atkins was featured in a UK television documentary on atheism called The Trouble with Atheism, presented by Rod Liddle. In that documentary Liddle asked Atkins to "Give me your views on the existence, or otherwise, of god." Atkins replied, "Well it's fairly straightforward: there isn't one. And there's no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don't believe that there is one. And I think that it is rather foolish that people do think that there is one."

Atkins is known for his use of sharp language in criticising religion: he appeared in the controversial 2008 documentary No Intelligence Allowed, in which he told interviewer Ben Stein that religion was "a fantasy", and "completely empty of any explanatory content. It is also evil." ‘Expelled’ documentary explores Darwin, Intelligent Design, religion debate He appeared on a television panel about science and religion with Dawkins and Swinburne. When the latter tried to explain Holocaust as a God's way of giving Jews the opportunity to be brave and noble, Atkins muttered: "May you rot in hell".

In 2007, Atkins's position on religion was described by Colin Tudge in an article in The Guardian as being non-scientific. In the same article, Atkins was also described as being 'more hardline than Richard Dawkins', and of deliberately choosing to ignore Peter Medawar's famous adage that "Science is the art of the soluble".

General readers

• The Second Law. New York: W. H. Freeman. 1987.
• The Periodic Kingdom: A journey into the land of the chemical elements. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1995
• "The limitless power of science." in:

University textbooks

• Quanta: A Handbook of Concepts. Oxford Univ. Press. 1991.
• (with Loretta Jones) Chemical Principles. New York: W. H. Freeman. 2001.
• (with Julio De Paula)
• (with D. F. Shriver)