Donald Hill Perkins (15 October 1925 – 30 October 2022) was a British physicist and an emeritus professor at the University of Oxford. He achieved great success in the field of particle physics and was also known for his books. Perkins was born in 1925 and educated at Imperial College London. In 1945 he received his B.Sc. and 1948, a Ph.D. From 1949 he worked at

Bristol University , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

and in 1955/56 at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

. In 1956 he received the post of reader in Bristol University. In 1963/64 he conducted research at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

. In 1965 he became Oxford professor of elementary particle physics. There, under the leadership of Denys Wilkinson, he built, along with Ken W. Allen, the new Department of Nuclear Physics. In 1976/77 and 1983/84 he returned to CERN on sabbatical leave. In 1998 he retired and became Emeritus Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.

Achievements

Perkins' earliest achievements include the discovery of the negative pion in

cosmic radiation Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

. At Berkeley, he worked with accelerators on K-mesons and the annihilation of

proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...

s and antiprotons, at CERN in neutrino scattering experiments. Perkins made important pioneering discoveries in regard to the

weak neutral current Weak neutral current interactions are one of the ways in which subatomic particles can interact by means of the weak force. These interactions are mediated by the Z boson. The discovery of weak neutral currents was a significant step towa ...

( Gargamelle experiment) and the experimental verification of

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

. In 1982 he explored the possible proton decay, and found a first indication of neutrino oscillations. Perkins together with

Peter Fowler Peter Randall Fowler (born 9 June 1959) is an Australian golfer who plays on the PGA Tour of Australasia and European Senior Tour. Career Fowler was born in Hornsby, New South Wales. He turned professional in 1977 and won the Australian Open i ...

first suggested the use of pion beams as a cancer therapy in a ''Nature'' article in 1961. Perkins in 1959 published his first textbook, together with C.F. Powell and Peter Fowler, on the theme of the emulsion technique applied to cosmic rays, nuclear, and particle physics. His ''Introduction to High Energy Physics'' is a global standard work on particle physics. In 2003 he published ''Particle Astrophysics''. Perkins died on 30 October 2022, at the age of 97.

Awards

Perkins was awarded honorary doctorates in Bristol and the University of Sheffield. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1966. In 1979 he received the

Guthrie Medal and Prize The Michael Faraday Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and appl ...

of the Institute of Physics, in 1992 the

Holweck Prize The Fernand Holweck Medal and Prize is a major European prize for Physics awarded jointly every year by the British Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Société Française de Physique (SFP). It is one of the four Grand Prix of the SFP and one of ...

of the Société Française de Physique, in 1997, the

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important ...

of the Royal Society and in 2001 the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society. He gave numerous guest lectures at universities in Toronto, Seattle, Chicago, Hawaii and Victoria and the 2004 Wolfgang Paul Lecture in Bonn.

External links

Scientific publications of Donald Hill Perkins
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

* (short biography on the occasion of the Wolfgang-Paul-Lecture at the University of Bonn)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perkins, Donald Hill 1925 births 2022 deaths British physicists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of St Catherine's College, Oxford People associated with CERN Royal Medal winners