Physics Gallery

Portrait of Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher

andlt;strongandgt;R.A. Fisher.andlt;/strongandgt; Portrait of the Englishstatistician and geneticist, Sir Ronald AylmerFisher (1890- 1962). Fisher graduated inmathematics and physics at Cambridge University in1912. He was appointed statistician at RothamstedExperimental Station, in charge of 66 years ofdata on agricultural field trials. Fisher'scontributions to statistics include methods ofexperimental design, work on human inheritance, and the genetics of the rhesus blood factor. Inandlt;emandgt;The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, andlt;/emandgt;he showed that Mendel's genetic laws and Darwin'stheory of natural selection are in full accord.Fisher became professor of genetics at Cambridgein 1943, and was knighted in 1952

© A.BARRINGTON BROWN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Higgs Boson particle, artwork

Higgs Boson particle. Computer artwork of a yellow sphere in a circular chamber with light emanating from behind it. This could represent the Higgs Boson particle being discovered in a particle accelerator. The Higgs Boson is an elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the only particle of the Standard Model which is yet to be detected (as of 2009). Particle accelerators are enormous circular tunnels built underground. They are used to accelerate particles towards each other at massive speeds. When the particles collide they break up into smaller particles, revealing their component parts. It is hoped that this process will enable the detection of the Higgs Boson

© LAGUNA DESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Prof. Peter Higgs

British theoretical physicist Professor Peter Higgs (b. 1929). In 1964, Higgs predicted the existence of a new type of fundamental particle, commonly called the Higgs boson. This particle is required by many of the current Grand Unified Theories (or GUTs) which hope to explain three of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, the weak & the strong nuclear forces) in a single unified theory. The Higgs boson is yet to be detected experimentally. Higgs is professor of theoretical physics at Edinburgh University. This photograph was taken at his office in Edinburgh in 1988 and is composited with a simulated 'Higgs Event' such as might be seen in the CMS detector of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory

© DAVID PARKER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY