Weighty prize for College physicist's work on the origin of mass

Professor Tom Kibble wins the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize <em> - News</em>

Weighty prize for College physicist's work on the origin of mass Professor Tom Kibble wins the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize - News

By Danielle Reeves
Thursday 22 October 2009

Emeritus Professor Tom Kibble from Imperial College London has been jointly awarded the 2010 J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics – one of the most prestigious international prizes in physics.

Awarded by the American Physical Society, the J.J. Sakurai Prize has been given to six researchers, including Edinburgh's Peter Higgs, for three research papers published in the 1960s that led to the theory explaining how certain particles acquire mass, now known as the 'Higgs Mechanism.' They will collect their prize in February 2010.

Professor Kibble's paper, published jointly with Sakurai prize co-winners Gerald Guralnik and Richard Hagen in 1964, is one of the studies that shaped particle physics throughout the 20th century. Finding experimental proof of all six Sakurai prize winners' work on the theory of mass is one of the aims of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Experiments that could prove the existence of the elusive Higgs Boson particle are due to begin there next year.

I caught up with Professor Kibble to congratulate him on the prize, and find out more about his work.

Professor Tom Kibble is one of six researchers awarded the prestigious 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize

How did you feel when you found out you had won the J. J. Sakurai Prize?

Grateful and of course very pleased! I'm particularly happy that the American Physical Society has recognised all three research groups whose work contributed to the current theory of mass. Our paper appeared after those published by Higgs, and the Robert Brout/François Englert collaboration, but all three studies played an important role in the development of this important theory.

What are you most proud of from the course of your career?

This study on the theory of mass is obviously very important and I'm excited to watch the progress of experiments at CERN and in the States as scientists hunt for evidence of the existence of the particles we predicted. However, I'm equally proud of the work I published over 10 years later, in the late 1970s, introducing the idea of 'cosmic strings' – structures that may have been formed very early in the life of the Universe. I'm still working these days on the links between cosmic strings and super string theory, which is the 'theory of everything' favoured by most physicists.

Your career at Imperial spans nearly five decades - what have you enjoyed most about working in science?

I've made many great friends all over the world and have been able to travel widely in the course of my research collaborations. I'll be travelling to Washington DC in February next year to pick up my Sakurai Prize and it will be great to have a chance to catch up with the other winners in person again after many years. I have remained close friends with co-winner of the Sakurai Prize, Gerry Guralnik, and our sons – who are a similar age – are friends too.