Particle physics addresses these fundamental questions by
studying the fundamental structure of matter and using the knowledge
gained to understand the evolution of the Universe, from the Big Bang to
the distant future. In addition to our current understanding, this talk
will also discuss some of the big open questions, such as the stability
of space itself and the nature of the dark matter that holds galaxies
together.
About the speaker: John Ellis currently holds the Clerk Maxwell
Professorship of Theoretical Physics at King's College in London. After
obtaining a PhD from Cambridge University and post-doctoral positions at
SLAC and Caltech, from 1973 to 2011 he worked at CERN (Geneva), where
hewas Theory Division Leader for six years. His research interests focus
on the phenomenological aspects of elementary particle physics and its
connections with astrophysics, cosmology and quantum gravity. Much of
his work relates directly to experiment: interpreting results of
searches for new particles and exploring the physics that could be done
with future accelerators. A proposal he made in 1976 led to the
discovery of the gluon in 1979, and he was one of the first to study how
the Higgs boson could be produced and discovered. He has authored over a
thousand scientific papers, with over sixty thousand citations in total.
He is currently very active in efforts to understand the Higgs particle
discovered recently at CERN, comparing the properties of this particle
with the predictions of the Standard Model - one of his papers was
quoted by the Swedish Academy as saying that it is "beyond any
reasonable doubt" a Higgs boson - and understanding the implications of
the discovery for extensions of the Standard Model such as supersymmetry
and other possible new physics such as dark matter. He is also now
studying possiblefuture particle accelerators, and is known for his
efforts to promote global collaboration in particle physics.
John Ellis was awarded the Maxwell Medal (1982) and the Paul Dirac Prize
(2005) by the Institute of Physics. He was elected Fellow of the Royal
Society of London in 1985 and in 2015 he was elected a Foreign Fellow of
the Indian National Science Academy.