Tejinder Virdee

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Professor Sir
Tejinder (Jim) Virdee
File:Virdee, Tejinder 2012.jpg
Tejinder Virdee on the balcony of the Royal Society in July, 2012
Born Tejinder Singh Virdee
(1952-10-13) 13 October 1952 (age 71)
Nyeri, Kenya Colony
Residence Geneva, Switzerland
Nationality British
Fields Physics (particle physics)
Institutions Imperial College London
Alma mater Queen Mary University of London (B.Sc.)
Imperial College London (Ph.D.)
Thesis Sigma Hyperon Production in a Triggered Bubble Chamber (1979)
Doctoral advisor Peter Dornan
Known for Originating the concept and overseeing the construction of CMS
Notable awards 2009 IOP Chadwick Medal and Prize
2012 Yuri Milner Special Fundamental Physics Prize
2013 EPS HEP Prize
2015 IOP Glazebrook Medal and Prize

Prof. Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee, FRS (born 13 October 1952), is an experimental particle physicist and Professor of Physics at Imperial College London.[1] He is best known for originating the concept of CMS with a few other colleagues and has been referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' [2] of the project. CMS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1991 and now has over 3000 participants from 38 countries.

Virdee was elected Fellow of the Royal Society[3] and of the Institute of Physics in 2012. In recognition of his work on CMS he has been awarded the Institute of Physics (IOP) 2007 High Energy Physics Prize[4] and the IOP 2009 Chadwick Medal and Prize.[5] In 2012, he was awarded the Yuri Milner Special Fundamental Physics Prize for 'leadership in the scientific endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider along with 6 other physicists.[6] In 2013 he was awarded the European Physical Society High Energy Physics Prize for his pioneering work and outstanding leadership in the making of the CMS experiment along with two others, one from CMS and one from ATLAS and the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations.[7]

In 2014, Virdee was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to science.[8]

Early life and education

Tejinder Virdee, son of Udham Kaur and Chain Singh Virdee, was born in Nyeri, Kenya in 1952 into a Sikh family. Virdee went to school in Kisumu at the Kisumu Boys High School. Due to the prevailing circumstances in Kenya at the time, his family Indian by origin, left in 1967 and moved to Birmingham, England.[9] He credits part of his interest in physics to Howard Stockley, his physics teacher at King's Norton Boys' School, Birmingham, whom he describes as an 'inspirational teacher'.[9] He also remembers visiting Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry, where he stumbled across a cloud chamber sparking his interest in the study of the structure of matter. Virdee obtained a B.Sc. in Physics from Queen Mary University of London in 1974.

Research career

After completing his Ph.D. at Imperial College London, on an experiment conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California, he joined CERN in 1979 as a Fellow of the Experimental Physics Division. Virdee’s early scientific career (1979-1984) involved verifying the strange notion that the “quarks” (the constituents of the protons the neutrons and all other hadrons) carry fractional electric charge. This was successfully demonstrated by the NA14 photoproduction experiment at CERN in the mid-eighties.[10] Following NA14 he joined the UA1 experiment at CERN's proton-antiproton collider (SPS) where his interest in high-performance calorimetry was developed, leading to his invention of a novel technique of collecting light in plastic scintillator-based calorimeters.[11]

Towards the end of UA1, (1990) Virdee, with a few other colleagues, started planning an experiment based on a high field solenoid that would be able to identify the missing elements of the Standard Model (SM) and also to probe in full the physics of the TeV scale. This was to become the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC,[12] one of the most complex instruments Science has ever seen. Since 1991 Virdee has played a crucial role in all phases of CMS. Over the last two decades this has covered conceptual design, intensive R&D, prototyping, construction, installation, commissioning, data-taking and finally physics exploitation. He has been the driving force behind many of the major technology decisions made in CMS, especially the selection of the calorimeter technologies. The CMS hadron calorimeter uses the technique he had invented earlier.[11]

The possibility of discovering a Higgs-like boson played a crucial role in the conceptual design of CMS,[13][14] and served as a benchmark to test the performance of the experiment. In 1990 Virdee and a colleague, Christopher Seez, carried out the first detailed simulation studies of the most plausible way to detect the SM Higgs boson in the low-mass region in the environment of the LHC: via its decay into two photons.[15] Understanding that dense scintillating crystals offer arguably the best possibility of achieving excellent energy resolution, Virdee made a compelling case for the use of lead tungstate scintillating crystals (PbWO4) for the electromagnetic calorimeter of CMS[16] and then led the team that proved the viability of this technique,[17] a technique that has played a crucial role in the discovery of the new heavy boson,[18][19] in July 2012. Virdee was deeply involved in this search for the Higgs boson, especially via its two-photon decay mode.

Virdee was the deputy project leader of CMS between 1993 and 2006 and was then elected project leader (Spokesperson) in January 2007 for a period of three years.[20] He oversaw the final stages of construction, installation and data taking with the first collisions at the LHC.

Virdee is a major voice in arguing for the long-term future of the LHC accelerator and its experiments. An increase in the interaction rate by almost a factor of around ten is being advocated for the CMS and ATLAS experiments.[21]

Invited lectures and outreach

Virdee has given several keynote speeches at international conferences, opening or closing addresses at particle physics conferences and public lectures on the LHC Project. These include the 2007 Schrödinger Lecture,[22] the 2012 Peter Lindsay Lectures at Imperial College,[23] the 16th Kaczmarczik Lecture at Drexel University,[24] Philadelphia in 2011, the Keynote Speech at the 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Reno, USA[25] and joint lectures on the LHC Project with Prof. Edward Witten in Philadelphia, U.S.A. (2008)[26] and Split, Croatia (2009).

Amongst his interviews are a dialogue with A. C. Grayling,[27] and an interview with Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC Radio 4 programme “The Life Scientific”.[9]

Professional Awards

  • 2015 Awarded the Institute of Physics Glazebrook Medal and Prize.[28]
  • 2013 Awarded the European Physical Society High Energy Physics Prize.[7]
  • 2012 Awarded the Special Fundamental Physics Prize.[29]
  • 2009 Awarded the Institute of Physics Chadwick Medal and Prize.[5]
  • 2007 Awarded the Institute of Physics High Energy Physics Prize.[4]

Bibliography

Public Lectures

  • 2012 Peter Lindsay Lectures at Imperial College.[23]
  • 2012 Special lecture on the discovery of the Higgs Boson at Imperial College London (video).
  • 2012 “Searching for the Higgs boson”, Cheltenham Science Festival, U.K.[30]
  • 2011 16th Kaczmarczik Lecture: “Exploring Nature Moments after the Big Bang: The LHC Accelerator and the CMS Experiment”, Drexel University, Philadelphia, U.S.A.[24]
  • 2009 “Discovering the Quantum Universe; The LHC Project at CERN”, Keynote Speaker at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair in Reno, U.S.A.[31] (video)
  • 2008 “Discovering the Quantum Universe; The LHC Project at CERN”, International Conference on High Energy Physics, Philadelphia, USA with Prof. E. Witten.[26]
  • 2007 20th Schrodinger Lecture, Centennial of Imperial College: “Discovering the Quantum Universe: The Large Hadron Collider Project at CERN”, London, U.K.[22] (video)

Video and Radio

  • 2013 Participated in workshops promoting science education in Africa to Secondary Schools students with the BBC World Service programmes for “BBC Festival of Science Africa”, broadcast from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.[32] (audio)
  • 2012 Featured on the BBC Radio programme, “Life Scientific”, that discusses the scientific life of individual scientists, 20 March 2012.[9] (audio)
  • 2009 Dialogue on the LHC project and CMS with Prof. A. C. Grayling, broadcast on BBC World Service programme “Exchanges at the Frontier”.[27] (audio | video)

Other Recognition

  • 2015 Awarded the Outstanding Achievement in Science and Technology award at The Asian Awards[33]
  • 2014 Asian Achievers Awards: Professional of the Year.[34]
  • 2014 Appointed Visiting Professor of Science, New College of Humanities, London, U.K.[35]
  • 2013 Awarded Doctor of Science (honoris causa) by University of Lyon.[36]
  • 2013 Awarded Doctor of Science (honoris causa) by Queen Mary University of London, his alma mater.[37]
  • 2013 GG2 Award.[38]
  • 2010 The Sikh Awards: Sikh's in Education.[39]
  • 2010 Named 62nd in “EUREKA 100: The Science List” - The London Times' 100 most important figures in British science.[40]
  • 2007 Named in the list of “100 Personalities that make Swiss Romandie”; l’Hebdo magazine, Switzerland.[41]

References

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    Virdee plans to use the money to support science in schools in Sub-Saharan Africa—see Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

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  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ [1]
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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