Dear students,
Don Perkins passed away on October 30. His books remain milestones in High Energy Physics education and research.
Ciao,
FF
Dear Colleagues,
I hope you and your loved ones are well. Most of you may not have met Don but you may know his books. I met him three times in my life, all after I moved to Oxford. Each meeting was unforgettable – he was a remarkable physicist.
Ian
Professor Don Perkins CBE, FRS (1925-2022)
The Oxford Department of Physics is sad to convey that Emeritus Professor Don Perkins CBE, FRS died peacefully on the morning of Sunday 30 October in Oxford. He was 97, having just celebrated his birthday earlier in the month; he lost his wife Dorothy in 2021. We would like to extend our condolences to his family and, in particular, to his two daughters.
Don was a major, well known, and admired figure in experimental particle physics throughout his life, both in the UK and worldwide. He began his career in ‘wartime’ Imperial College London (benefitting from scholarships he had won) and where, as a Ph.D. student, he used photographic emulsion techniques to study cosmic rays. He then moved to Bristol University in 1948 where he continued with these studies, and then finally to Oxford where he was Professor from 1965 until his retirement in 1998. He was responsible for creating the particle physics research activity in the new university department established by Professor Sir Denys Wilkinson. He led the UK and the European research programme in neutrino physics, which was pursued at CERN.
Don served as Chairman of the Nuclear Physics Board of the UK Science Research Council (SRC), which led to his CBE, and Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee at CERN , to name only two of the many roles he undertook. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1966 and received the Royal Medal of the Society in 1991.
Besides research, Don will be remembered by legions of students worldwide for his books, and in particular his ‘Introduction to High Energy Particle Physics’.
Ian Shipsey FRS, Head, Department of Physics, University of Oxford
Daniela Bortoletto, Head, Sub-Department of Particle Physics, University of Oxford