Robin Marshall (born 1940) is an

Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

professor of Physics & Biology in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

. He currently lives in the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

village of

Castillon-du-Gard Castillon-du-Gard is a commune in the Gard department in southern France. Population See also *Communes of the Gard department This is a list of the 351 Communes of France, communes of the Gard Departments of France, department of France. T ...

in the Region of Occitanie, where he writes and paints.

Education

Marshall was educated at Ermysted's Grammar School in

Skipton Skipton (also known as Skipton-in-Craven) is a market town and civil parish in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England. Historically in the East Division of Staincliffe Wapentake in the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is on the River A ...

and the

where he was awarded a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

degree in 1962 followed by a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in 1965 for research developing sonic

spark chamber {{short description, Charged particle detector A spark chamber is a particle detector: a device used in particle physics for detecting electrically charged particles. They were most widely used as research tools from the 1930s to the 1960s and ha ...

s and studying

pion In particle physics, a pion (or a pi meson, denoted with the Greek letter pi: ) is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the lightest mesons and, more gen ...

pair production in

proton interactions.

Research and career

Marshall is an innovator in the field of high-energy electron–positron annihilation, making many personal contributions. He was the first at the Positron-Electron Tandem Ring Accelerator (PETRA) e+e– collider at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) to determine the electroweak properties of

lepton In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin (spin (physics), spin ) that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: electric charge, charged leptons (also known as the electron-li ...

s and then

quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All common ...

s. These papers become templates for other experimenters over the next ten years. He performed the definitive analysis of the world's electron–positron data to produce what are now the textbook results for the

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 ty ...

(QCD) 'fine structure' constant and the

fermion In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Generally, it has a half-odd-integer spin: spin , spin , etc. In addition, these particles obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Fermions include all quarks and ...

electroweak interaction In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very diff ...

parameters. In 1984, he published a novel method for isolating

bottom quark The bottom quark or b quark, also known as the beauty quark, is a third-generation heavy quark with a charge of − ''e''. All quarks are described in a similar way by electroweak and quantum chromodynamics, but the bottom quark has exce ...

events and then used the method to measure the b electroweak properties, showing that it belonged to a weak

isospin In nuclear physics and particle physics, isospin (''I'') is a quantum number related to the up- and down quark content of the particle. More specifically, isospin symmetry is a subset of the flavour symmetry seen more broadly in the interactions ...

doublet state, and hence that 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 ...

must exist. This was one of several significant physics results from PETRA. He was a group leader at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) from 1978 to 1992, and in the 1990s led the British involvement in an experiment at the electron–proton collider, Hadron-Elektron-Ringanlage (HERA), at DESY. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:

Awards and honours

Marshall was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1995 and was a

Fellow of the Institute of Physics Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) is "the highest level of membership attainable" by physicists who are members of the Institute of Physics (IoP), "for those with a degree in physics or related subject (or equivalent knowledge gaine ...

(FInstP) from 1996 to 2018. In 1997, he was awarded the

Max Born Medal and Prize The Max Born Medal and Prize is a scientific prize awarded yearly by the German Physical Society (DPG) and the British Institute of Physics (IOP) in memory of the German physicist Max Born, who was a German-Jewish physicist, instrumental in the ...

by the German Physical Society.

Published books

Marshall has published a comprehensive history of "Three Centuries of Manchester Physics", in five volumes, covering the scientific, cultural, social and political aspects of the evolution of the subject in the city and its immediate surroundings. In 2018, he published a book containing letters written mainly by physicists to the Nobel Prize winner William Lawrence Bragg during the first worlds war, providing fresh insight into the deeds and thoughts of scientists active in the front line of battle. In 2019, he published a definitive history of the discovery of transmutation in Manchester by Ernest Rutherford in 1919. He has written one work of fiction "The Nobel Conspiracy".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Robin 1940 births Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of the University of Manchester People educated at Ermysted's Grammar School English physicists Academics of the University of Manchester Experimental physicists