Nigel Lockyer

Dr. Nigel Lockyer is a Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of TRIUMF. He was educated at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Nigel has been serving as director of TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, since May 2007. As someone born in Scotland, raised in Canada, and educated in the United States, Nigel is both a citizen of the world and a true sports fan at heart.

By training, Nigel is a particle physicist, but in practice he has many interests. He came to TRIUMF, and returned to Canada, from the University of Pennsylvania where he was a professor of physics. His research there explored the detailed behaviour of matter and energy at the smallest scales and the highest energies, using accelerators around the world to probe elementary particles known as quarks that are thought to make up matter at the most basic level. Particle physicists are the cartoonists of physical science: their theories of the universe include objects named “quark,” “strange,” “charm,” “Zed,” “gluon,” and maybe even “string.” Nigel is famous in the physics community for his work on the particle known as the bottom quark for which he was awarded the American Physical Society’s W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in 2006.

Nigel is well seasoned in working with big teams. For two years, Nigel served as spokesperson for a 600-person international collaboration known as CDF based at Fermilab near Chicago. The project achieved world acclaim for studying the top quark, a counterpart to the bottom quark. While at Pennsylvania, Nigel developed his interest in the applications of physics to real-world problems, a spirit that he has brought with him to TRIUMF. He worked with the Penn Medical School on proton therapy for cancer as well as detectors for medical physics. He has also lectured on Benjamin Franklin and is an avid fan of Winston Churchill.

In addition to directing TRIUMF, Nigel is also a professor at UBC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. When he has time between the many commitments of a laboratory director, he reads business articles in the Globe and Mail, excerpts from President Barack Obama’s speeches, and cutting-edge research papers in nuclear medicine. Nigel also contributes to Quantum Diaries , a collaborative blog following a number of particle physics labs and personnel.

References

• Faculty page, University of Pennysylvania
• Interview and article about TRIUMF

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Name	Lockyer, Nigel
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