News

The hunt for the Higgs Boson

(28 October 2003)

Nigel Glover, Professor of Physics at the University of Durham, gives his inaugural lecture, ‘The hunt for the Higgs Boson’, on Wednesday 29 October.

Professor Glover works on the phenomenology of high energy particle interactions. Phenomenology is research on the boundary between theory and experiment. It is concerned with identifying interesting physical observables, making theoretical predictions for them and then confronting experimental data gathered at the major international laboratories.

Professor Glover focuses on the strong and electroweak interactions with an emphasis on precision predictions of quantities that can be studied in current or forthcoming high energy experiments.

During his lecture he will discuss the current state of play in elementary particle physics. He will address four questions. What is the Higgs Boson? Why is the Higgs Boson necessary for the model to be consistent? Why hasn’t the Higgs Boson been found yet? How will experimental particle physics experiments detect the Higgs Boson?

At the end of the lecture, an update of the current search will be given via a link up with the D0 control room at Fermilab.

The lecture will be held at 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday 29 October in Room PH8 of the Department of Physics at the University of Durham. The lecture is open to the public as well as to members of the University.

Nigel Glover is Professor of Physics at the University of Durham and is a member of both the Centre for Particle Theory and the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology.

He is a second generation Durham man who did a first-class Honours in Physics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University and returned to Durham afterwards for a PhD. After two year positions at Cambridge, CERN and Fermilab, he returned to the University of Durham as lecturer in 1991 and was appointed to a Personal Chair in 2002. He is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology and currently holds a PPARC Senior Fellowship.

Further information:

Jayne Duplock, Internal Communications, jayne.duplock@durham.ac.uk, 0191 334 6071

Daphne Buijs, Public Relations, daphne.buijs@durham.ac.uk, 0191 334 6076