Sir James Dyson
at Cambridge Union

The Cambridge Union hosts Sir James Dyson at 6pm on Friday 20 November 2026 in the Chamber. During the event, the inventor and Dyson founder receives the Professor Stephen Hawking Fellowship 2026. Sir James Dyson is an inventor, businessman and philanthropist, best known for inventing the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner. He founded Dyson, a technology company whose research interests span robotics, AI, machine learning, solid-state battery development, material science and high-speed electric motors. In 2002 he founded the James Dyson Foundation, and in 2017 he founded the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology. He was awarded a CBE in 1998, knighted in 2007, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015, and appointed to the Order of Merit in the 2016 New Year Honours.