AN Australian academic who spends part of each year in Wiltshire has been honoured by his country for his contribution to science, which includes research into the best way to dunk a biscuit.

Dr Len Fisher received the Order of Australia, Down Under’s equivalent of the MBE, on Australia Day (January 26) for his efforts to make science part of our culture.

Dr Fisher, who lives in Newtown, Bradford on Avon, when he is in the UK, has written about the science of sour taste and contributed a recipe to Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck cook book. after spending 20 years as a food science researcher.

He was named Science Writer of the Year in 2004 by the American Institute of Physics for How to Dunk a Doughnut and he won a Nobel prize in 1999 for calculating the best way to dunk a biscuit.

“I was trying to show how scientists think about everyday problems. People want to know the answers but don’t want to know how the thinking went,” he said.

He particularly wants to show that science can be a rewarding career and get the different science disciplines to interact better with each other.

The Order of Australia, established in February 1975 by Queen Elizabeth 2, is the equivalent of an MBE in this country.

Dr Fisher’s wide-ranging career has seen him work in the Department of Anatomy at University College in London and the University of Bristol’s School of Physics, where he still has an honorary position.

He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the Royal Society of New South Wales, the Institute of Physics and the Linnean Society.

He’s communicated science through BBC radio and television, ABC’s The Science Show, books, articles and scientific papers. The Order of Australia was created in 1975.