He is Director of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, and is an Affiliated Research Scholar of the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge.

He is a founder Director of Total Astronomy Limited , a company based in Cambridge that provides media services for the astronomy and space industries.

Mitton is the managing editor of the International Journal of Astrobiology.

Simon Mitton studied physics and astrophysics. His undergraduate studies were at the Clarendon Laboratory and Trinity College, Oxford. For his doctoral research in high-energy astrophysics he studied at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, under Nobel Laureate Sir Martin Ryle FRS. His postdoctoral career started under Sir Fred Hoyle FRS at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge.

Recently his principal research project has been in the history of astronomy, now his academic field. He has completed a large biography of the British cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915 - 2001), published in April 2005. His current research centres on the long history of attempts to understand the origin of structure in the universe. His other research interests include science and religion, the history of attempts to measure the velocity of light, the life of Mary Somerville , and the life of Copernicus.

Currently he is collaborating with a colleague at Princeton University Observatory with whom he is writing a major book on our present understanding of the nature of the universe. This book has been accepted by Princeton University Press.

He has also contributed to research on the Cambridge astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944) , and has an interest in Georges Lemaitre , one of the College's most distinguished former members (1923 - 24)

Awards

• Fellow, St Edmund's College, Cambridge (1973)
• Fifth Champness Lecturer, Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers (1975)
• 35th Barringer Lecturer, University of Arkansas (March 2009)

Named after him

• Asteroid 4027 Mitton (Awarded jointly with Jacqueline Mitton)