Martin Rees but has criticised militant atheists for being too hostile to religion. He is a member of the Labour Party. Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010. Rees was born on 23 June 1942 in York, England. After a peripatetic life during the war his parents, both teachers, settled with Rees, an only child, in a rural part of Shropshire near
William Lee Rees Committees from 1891 to 1893. In 1893, Rees accused Alfred Cadman, the Member for Thames, of using his position as Minister for Native Affairs for personal gain. Cadman inconclusively sued Rees for libel, and challenged him to a by-election contest for Rees' seat, City of Auckland, which Rees lost. Rees then retired from parliamentary politics, returning to Gisborne, where most of his family lived and where he business interests. He lived at Te Hapara for most of the rest of his life, participating in several philanthropic gestures, including the installation of the first cricket pitch and tennis courts in Gisborne.