John Ellis (physicist, born 1946)

John Ellis
CBE FRS HonFInstP
Born (1946-07-01) 1 July 1946 (age 78)
Hampstead, London, England, UK
NationalityBritish-Swiss
Alma materKing's College, Cambridge
Known forProposing how to discover the gluon[1] and the Higgs boson[2]


Coining the term Penguin diagram[3]


Popularizing the term "Theory of Everything"[4][5]
AwardsMayhew Prize (1968)
Maxwell Medal and Prize (1982)
Paul Dirac Medal and Prize (2005)
Scientific career
FieldsParticle physics
InstitutionsKing's College London
CERN
ThesisApproximate symmetries of hadrons
Doctoral advisorBruno Renner

Jonathan Richard "John" Ellis CBE FRS HonFInstP (born 1 July 1946[6]) is a British-Swiss theoretical physicist.

After completing his secondary education at Highgate School, he attended King's College, Cambridge from 1964, earning his PhD in theoretical (high-energy) particle physics in 1971, after having spent the academic year 1970/71 as a visiting student at CERN.[7] After one-year post-doc positions in the SLAC Theory Group[8] and at Caltech,[9] he went back to CERN in 1973, first as a research fellow and from 1974 as a staff member,[10] where he remained until he reached the fixed retirement age of 65.[11] Since 2010 Ellis is Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London, but continues to work at CERN holding a visiting scientist appointment.[12][13]

Ellis' activities at CERN have been wide-ranging in addition to his research.[14][15] He was twice Deputy Division Leader for the theory ("TH") division, and served as Division Leader for 1988–1994.[10] He was a member of the committees that selected experiments at the LEP[16] and LHC accelerators[17] and participated in early studies of possible future colliders such as CLIC[18] and FCC.[19] In the early 2000s he advised successive CERN Directors-General on relations with non-member states.[20] He was also the first chair of CERN's Equal Opportunities Advisory Panel.[21]

  1. ^ Ellis, John; Gaillard, Mary K.; Ross, Graham G. (1976). "Search for gluons in
    e+

    e−
     annihilation". Nuclear Physics B. 111 (2): 253. Bibcode:1976NuPhB.111..253E. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(76)90542-3.    "Errata". Nuclear Physics B. 130 (3): 516. 1977. Bibcode:1977NuPhB.130Q.516.. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(77)90253-X.
  2. ^ Ellis, John; Gaillard, Mary K.; Nanopoulos, D.V. (1976). "A phenomenological profile of the Higgs boson". Nuclear Physics B. 106: 292–340. Bibcode:1976NuPhB.106..292E. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(76)90382-5.
  3. ^ Ellis, J.; Gaillard, M.K.; Nanopoulos, D.V.; Rudaz, S. (1977). "The phenomenology of the next left-handed quarks". Nuclear Physics B. 131 (2–3): 285–307. Bibcode:1977NuPhB.131..285E. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(77)90374-1.
  4. ^ Ellis, John (2002). "Physics gets physical (correspondence)". Nature. 415 (6875): 957. Bibcode:2002Natur.415..957E. doi:10.1038/415957b. PMID 11875539.
  5. ^ Ellis, John (1986). "The Superstring: Theory of Everything, or of Nothing?". Nature. 323 (6089): 595–598. Bibcode:1986Natur.323..595E. doi:10.1038/323595a0. S2CID 4344940.
  6. ^ Sleeman, Elizabeth (2003). The International Who's Who 2004. Routledge. p. 489. ISBN 1-85743-217-7.
  7. ^ Ellis, Jonathan Richard (26 October 1971). Approximate symmetries of hadrons. Cambridge: University of Cambridge.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  8. ^ Bjorken, James (1998). "Foreword" (PDF). Beam Line. 28 (2): 2–3.
  9. ^ Ellis, John; Jaffe, Robert (1 March 1974). "Sum rule for deep-inelastic electroproduction from polarized protons". Physical Review D. 9 (5): 1444–1446. Bibcode:1974PhRvD...9.1444E. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.9.1444. ISSN 0556-2821.
  10. ^ a b Senior Staff Appointment (J. Ellis). Nomination de Personnel Supérieur. 187th Meeting of Committee of Council, 1988, retrieved 14 March 2024
  11. ^ "Oral History Interviews | John Ellis | American Institute of Physics". 23 June 2022. Archived from the original on 23 June 2022. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  12. ^ "Clerk Maxwell Chair of Theoretical Physics appointed". 31 March 2010. Archived from the original on 7 June 2010. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  13. ^ Banks, Michael (11 August 2011). "A life after CERN". Physics World.
  14. ^ Anthony, Katarina (5 September 2011). "John Ellis discusses the Higgs, the lack of the Higgs, and extra dimensions". CERN Bulletin (37–38).
  15. ^ Anthony, Katarina (26 September 2011). "John Ellis considers cosmology, colloquiums and new collaborations". CERN Bulletin (39–40).
  16. ^ LEP Experiments Committee: Minutes of the 1st meeting 24-25 March 1982, CERN, 1982, retrieved 14 March 2024
  17. ^ Aubert, J J; Brianti, G; Cashmore, R J; Di Lella, L; Dornan, P J; Duinker, P; Einsweiler, K; Eisele, F; Ellis, Jonathan Richard (1992), Minutes of the first meeting held on 2 Oct. 1992, LHCC-1, CERN, retrieved 14 March 2024
  18. ^ Ellis, John; Wilson, Ian (2001). "New physics with the Compact Linear Collider". Nature. 409 (6818): 431–435. doi:10.1038/35053224. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 11201761.
  19. ^ The TLEP Design Study Working Group; Bicer, M.; Duran Yildiz, H.; Yildiz, I.; Coignet, G.; Delmastro, M.; Alexopoulos, T.; Grojean, C; Antusch, S.; Sen, T.; He, H.-J.; Potamianos, K.; Haug, S.; Moreno, A.; Heister, A. (2014). "First look at the physics case of TLEP". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2014 (1): 164. arXiv:1308.6176. Bibcode:2014JHEP...01..164B. doi:10.1007/JHEP01(2014)164. ISSN 1029-8479.
  20. ^ Ellis, John (2003). "Developing countries and CERN". CERN Courier. 43 (6): 26–28.
  21. ^ "Liberté? Egalité? Opportunité!". CERN Bulletin (44). 2000.