Thomas Kibble visits CERN

Emeritus Professor Sir Thomas W.B. Kibble, from Imperial College London visited LHC for the first time last week and delivered a colloquium on the genesis of electroweak unification and the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism.

 


From left to right: Jim Virdee, Tiziano Camporesi, Tom Kibble and Austin Ball on the visit to CMS.

On his way back from Trieste, where he received the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics' Dirac Medal, Tom Kibble stopped by CERN for his first visit to the LHC. Kibble had a standing invitation from Jim Virdee, former CMS spokesperson, who is also a researcher from Imperial College London.

Peter Jenni (left) and Tom Kibble tour the ATLAS detector. (Image: Erwan Bertrand)

Kibble made the trip to CERN a family outing and brought along 14 relatives,  including his children and grandchildren. He visited the ATLAS detector with Peter Jenni, its former spokesperson, on Friday 10 October.

In the afternoon, Kibble delivered a colloquium in the CERN Council Chamber in which he gave a historical account of the genesis of Electroweak Unification and the Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism, from his perspective at Imperial College. He explored the research from the 50s and 60s that lead to electroweak interaction theory and the BEH mechanism.

On Saturday morning he and his family visited CMS with Jim Virdee, Tiziano Camporesi, the current CMS spokesperson, and Austin Ball, the current Technical Coordinator, before returning to England.

You can watch Tom Kibble's CERN Colloquium here.

by Rosaria Marraffino