Sir John Bertram Adams (24 May 1920 – 3 March 1984) was an English

accelerator physicist An accelerator physicist is a scientist who contributes to the field of Accelerator physics, involving the fundamental physical mechanisms underlying beams of charged particles accelerated to high energies and the structures and materials needed to ...

and administrator. Adams is mostly known for his work 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 ...

and

Culham Laboratory The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is the UK's national laboratory for fusion research. It is located at the Culham Science Centre, near Culham, Oxfordshire, and is the site of the Joint European Torus (JET), Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak ...

. Despite a lack of formal university education, Adams worked for organizations like the Telecommunications Research Establishment and the

Atomic Energy Research Establishment The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned and funded by the British Governm ...

in the 1940s and early 1950s. He served as acting director and eventually as elected director of

, from 1976 until 1981.

Biography

Early life

Born in Kingston, Surrey on May 24, 1920. He attend Eltham College from 1931 until 1936, after which he began to work for Siemens Laboratories in Woolwich. He continued studying at the South East London Technical Institute until 1939 earning a

Higher National Certificate A Higher National Certificate (HNC), part of the Higher Nationals suite of qualifications, is a higher education/further education qualification in the United Kingdom. Overview In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the HNC is a BTEC qualificatio ...

. This was the end of his formal education receiving no university education.

Professional career

at Siemens, his work was concerned with the acoustic properties of telephones. Between 1940 and 1945, he worked the Telecommunications Research Establishment being particularly responsible for developing the microwave radar After, Adams moved to the

until 1953. In 1953, he moved once more to the new

Laboratory, serving in the General Physics Division as the engineer in charge of designing and building the

Harwell Synchrocyclotron The Harwell Synchrocyclotron was a particle accelerator based at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment campus near Harwell, Oxfordshire. Construction of the accelerator began in 1946 and it was completed in 1949. The machine was of the synchro ...

, Europe's first large accelerator which operated successfully for 30 years until shutdown due to lack of funding. Also in late 1953, he was noted serving as a full staff member of the Proton Synchrotron Group. As CERN's proton synchrotron became fully operational in 1959, Adams was important to defining the methods and organization by which physicists would conduct testing. His work organizing CERN's administrative structure and measurement equipment were prepared for experimentation leading up until the synchrotron's start up at the end of 1959. After the death of Prof. C. J. Bakker, CERN Director-General, in April 1960, the Council of CERN appointed Adams to the post of acting Director-General. He held this post until August 1961 when he returned to the UK as director of the

Culham Fusion Laboratory The Joint European Torus, or JET, is an operational Magnetic confinement fusion, magnetically confined Plasma (physics), plasma physics experiment, located at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, UK. Based on a tokamak ...

, and then from 1966 to 1971 he was a member of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Returning to CERN in 1971 as Director-General of Laboratory II, he led the design of the

Super Proton Synchrotron The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland. History The SPS was de ...

. He split the duties of CERN Director General with Willibald Jentschke and then

Léon Van Hove Léon Charles Prudent Van Hove (10 February 1924 – 2 September 1990) was a Belgian physicist and a Director General of CERN. He developed a scientific career spanning mathematics, solid state physics, elementary particle and nuclear physics ...

during the 1970s. His careful management of CERN's new projects were important to getting funding and approval from CERN's council. His designs were cautious and focused on reliability while providing the ability for new improvements to be built. The

was able to reach energies of 540 GeV. With the reorganization of CERN in 1976, he became the executive Director-General, working on obtaining funding for the LEP collider. The new collider used magnet systems for acceleration that were designed by Adams in his previous accelerators. He was knighted in 1981.

Personal life

Adams married Renie Warburton on January 24, 1943. They had two daughters.

Awards and honors

* Rontegen Prize, University of Giessen (1960) * D. Sc. (Honorary), University of Geneva * Duddell Medal, Physical Society (1961) * D. Sc. (Honorary), University of Birmingham (1961) * Fellow of Royal Society (1963) * Leverhulme Medal (Royal Society) (1972) *

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 ...

, Royal Society (1977) * Knight Bachelor (1981)

John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science

The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science (JAI), an accelerator physics research institute comprising researchers from

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

, University of Oxford and Imperial College London is named in his honour. A main road ("Route Adams") in CERN's Prevessin site is also named after him.

References

External links

*
The John Adams Accelerator Institute
1920 births 1984 deaths 20th-century British engineers English physicists Accelerator physicists English nuclear physicists People associated with CERN Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Royal Medal winners British expatriates in Switzerland {{UK-physicist-stub