Professor John Ellis
Leading Physicist, Professor John Ellis, from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) opened LIYSF 2009 as the key note speaker.
John Ellis' research interests focus on the phenomenological aspects of particle physics, though he has also made important contributions to astrophysics, cosmology and quantum gravity. Most of his publications relate directly to experiment, from interpreting measurements and the results of searches for new particles, to exploring the physics that could be done with future accelerators. He was one of the pioneers of research at the interface between particle physics and cosmology, which has since become a sub-specialty of its own: particle astrophysics. He has long been an advocate and supporter of future accelerators, notably the LHC.
He obtained a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University and, after brief post-doc positions at SLAC and Caltech, he went to CERN where he has worked ever since. He was awarded the Maxwell Medal and the Paul Dirac Prize by the Institute of Physics in 1982 and 2005 respectively, and has been an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1985 and of the Institute of Physics since 1991. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by the University of Southampton and by Uppsala University. He has twice won the First Award in the Gravity Research Foundation essay competition, in 1999 and 2005.