Donald H. Perkins

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Donald H. Perkins (* 1925 ) is a British experimental physicist . He is a professor emeritus at Oxford University . He made important contributions in the field of particle physics and is also known for his textbooks .

Life

Perkins studied at Imperial College London . In 1945 he received his bachelor's degree, in 1948 he received his doctorate. He then worked from 1949 at the University of Bristol in the group of Cecil Powell . In 1955/56 he was at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley . In 1956 he was given the post of Reader in Bristol. In 1963/64 he conducted research at CERN . In 1965 he received a professorship for elementary particle physics at Oxford. There he built the new Department of Nuclear Physics together with Ken W. Allen (1923–1997) . In 1976/77 and 1983/84 he returned to CERN. He retired in 1998 and is an Emeritus Fellow at St Catherine's College , Oxford.

In addition to his teaching and research activities, Perkins also appeared as an advisor in science policy .

plant

Perkins' earliest achievements included the discovery of the negative pion in cosmic radiation (1947, before Powell and Occhialini), whose decays he investigated. In Berkeley he then worked on particle accelerators , including K mesons and pair annihilation of protons and antiprotons, and at CERN on neutrino scattering experiments.

He made important pioneering achievements and first discoveries with regard to the weak neutral current ( Gargamelle experiment) and the experimental verification of quantum chromodynamics . After 1982 he researched the possible proton decay and found the first indications of neutrino oscillations .

In the applied field, he worked on the conception of the HERA storage ring at DESY and worked on cancer therapy with pions as early as 1961 .

In 1959 Perkins published his first textbook together with CF Powell , the subject was the emulsion technique in altitude jet experiments. His Introduction to High Energy Physics is one of the standard works in particle physics worldwide. Most recently he published Particle Astrophysics in 2003 .

Honors

Perkins has received honorary doctorates from Bristol and Sheffield University . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Academia Europaea . In 1979 he received the Guthrie Medal of the Institute of Physics, in 1992 the Holweck Medal of the Institut Français de Physique, in 1997 the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and in 2001 the High Energy Physics Prize of the European Physical Society . He gave numerous guest lectures, for example at the Universities of Toronto , Seattle , Chicago , Hawaii and Victoria and in 2004 the Wolfgang Paul Lecture in Bonn .

Fonts

  • Donald H. Perkins, Cecil Powell, Peter Fowler: The study of elementary particles by the photographic method: an account of the principal techniques and discoveries illustrated by an atlas of photomicrographs . Pergamon Press, 1959.
  • Donald H. Perkins: Introduction to High Energy Physics . 4th edition. Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-511-80904-0 , doi : 10.1017 / CBO9780511809040 (English, 1st edition: 1972 by Addison-Wesley).
    • German translation of high energy physics . 3. Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1991.
  • Particle Astrophysics . 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-850952-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Denys Wilkinson Building . ( Memento of November 5, 2014 on the Internet Archive ) Oxford Particle Physics, June 20, 2002
  2. ^ Perkins, Don H. Author profile . INSPIRE-HEP . Retrieved July 19, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Perkins, Donald H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Perkins, Don
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physicist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1925