Terence Kealey is a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom, where he served as vice chancellor until 2014. The University of Buckingham is the only private university in the United Kingdom.
As a clinical biochemist, Kealey studied human experimental dermatology. He published around 45 original peer-reviewed papers and around 35 scientific reviews, also peer-reviewed. His work attracted funding from government, charities, and business.
While doing this research, Kealey learned how distorting government money could be to the scientific enterprise. In 1996, he published his first book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, in which he argued that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, governments need not fund science. His second book, Sex, Science and Profits (2008) argues that science is not a public good but, rather, is organized in invisible colleges, thereby making government funding irrelevant. Both works are recognized as vital contributions to the study of science and public policy. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.
Kealey trained initially in medicine at Bart’s Hospital Medical School, London. He studied for his doctorate at Oxford University, where he worked first as a Medical Research Council Training Fellow and then as a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science.