John Peoples Jr. is an American physicist who served as

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been opera ...

's third director, served as director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and oversaw the shutdown of the

Superconducting Super Collider The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) (also nicknamed the desertron) was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas. Its planned ring circumference was with an energy of 20 TeV per proton and was ...

. John Peoples Jr. was born on January 22, 1933, in New York City. After graduating from Staten Island Academy in 1950, he received a BSEE from the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in 1955. He worked as an engineer at Martin-Marietta Corporation until 1959, when he entered

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. He received his PhD in physics in 1966 and remained at Columbia as Assistant Professor of Physics until 1969, when he began teaching at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

. Peoples joined Fermilab as a physicist in 1971, eventually becoming head of the Proton Area. In 1981, Peoples became project manager of Tevatron I, which transformed the

Tevatron The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator (active until 2011) in the United States, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (also known as ''Fermilab''), east of Batavia, Illinois, and is the second highest energy particle collider ...

from a fixed target accelerator to a proton-antiproton collider, and oversaw the construction of the Antiproton Source. Peoples left Fermilab briefly from 1987 to 1988 to assist the Central Design Group for the

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

. When he returned to Fermilab in the fall of 1988, he became deputy director of the lab. After

Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf P ...

stepped down from the Fermilab directorship, Peoples became director on July 1, 1989. During Peoples's time as Fermilab's director, the lab increased the Tevatron's luminosity by a factor of 20 between 1990 and 1994, which made it possible for Fermilab's experiments CDF and D0 to discover the

top quark The top quark, sometimes also referred to as the truth quark, (symbol: t) is the most massive of all observed elementary particles. It derives its mass from its coupling to the Higgs Boson. This coupling y_ is very close to unity; in the Standard ...

. He also oversaw the construction of Fermilab's Main Injector from proposal in 1990 to completion in 1999. In addition to his work at Fermilab, Peoples managed the shutdown of Superconducting Super Collider between 1993 and 1994, served as chairman of the International Committee for Future Accelerators from 1993 to 1997, and was director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from June 1998 to June 2003. He stepped down from his position as Fermilab director in June 1999.

References

External links

John Peoples's scientific publications
on INSPIRE-HEP {{DEFAULTSORT:Peoples, John 1933 births 21st-century American physicists People associated with Fermilab Columbia University alumni Cornell University faculty Carnegie Mellon University alumni Living people