Colloquium
The LHC: a century of physics from Rutherford's atomic nucleus to Higgs' boson
Prof. Frank Close
Abstract
Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus in 1912 in an experiment on a table top. The LHC will be producing its first major results by 2012, involving teams of thousands and apparatus that is bigger than Rutherford's entire laboratory. How did science come to this, and what are the questions the LHC hopes to answer? What is Higgs' boson, and is it really Higgs that invented it? I will explore the role of symmetry and asymmetry in physics, and illustrate how the ideas that have been associated with Higgs' name have a long history.About the talk
The LHC: a century of physics from Rutherford's atomic nucleus to Higgs' boson
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Prof. Frank Close
University of Oxford, UK
University of Oxford, UK
Thursday November 25, 2010 - 0:00 GMT (Aula)
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About the speaker
Frank Close is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University. He was also
Deputy Chief Scientist at Rutherford Appleton Lab in the UK until 1997, and spent 3 years as Head of Communications at CERN (1997-2000).
He has over 200 papers on the quark and gluon structure of matter, as well as several popular books, "Antimatter", "Neutrino" and "The Infinity Puzzle".