Douglas Alan Ross (born 9 May 1948) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

physicist. he is

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

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 ...

of physics at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

Education

Ross was educated at

New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at th ...

where he earned his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in 1969 and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

in 1972, supervised by

John Clayton Taylor John Clayton Taylor (born 4 August 1930) is a British mathematical physicist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge and an Emeritu ...

for research on

muon A muon ( ; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 '' e'' and a spin of , but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As wi ...

decay.

Research

Ross is known for his contributions to the development and exploitation of

gauge theories In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian (and hence the dynamics of the system itself) does not change (is invariant) under local transformations according to certain smooth families of operations (Lie groups ...

, both within and beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. His work has led to the understanding of the

renormalisation Renormalization is a collection of techniques in quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similarity, self-similar geometric structures, that are used to treat infinity, infinities arising in calculated ...

structure of

spontaneously broken Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a spontaneous process of symmetry breaking, by which a physical system in a symmetric state spontaneously ends up in an asymmetric state. In particular, it can describe systems where the equations of motion or the ...

theories and to the theoretical properties of the

perturbation series In mathematics and applied mathematics, perturbation theory comprises methods for finding an approximate solution to a problem, by starting from the exact solution of a related, simpler problem. A critical feature of the technique is a middle ...

in non-Abelian theories. He performed a number of the early perturbative calculations which helped establish

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 type ...

as the theory of the

strong nuclear force The strong interaction or strong force is a fundamental interaction that confines quarks into proton, neutron, and other hadron particles. The strong interaction also binds neutrons and protons to create atomic nuclei, where it is called the n ...

. Among his contributions to physics beyond the Standard Model was the demonstration that the non-observation of

proton decay In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron. The proton decay hypothesis was first formulated by Andrei Sakharov ...

excluded the simplest

Grand Unified Theory A Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is a model in particle physics in which, at high energies, the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model comprising the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces are merged into a single force. Although this ...

Awards and honours

Ross was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2005. One or more of the preceding sentences may incorporate text from the royalsociety.org website where "all text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, Douglas 1948 births Fellows of the Royal Society British physicists Alumni of New College, Oxford Living people English Jews Jewish scientists Academics of the University of Southampton People associated with CERN