Sir John Bertram Adams
(24 May 1920 – 3 March 1984) was an English
accelerator physicist and administrator.
Adams is mostly known for his work at
CERN and
Culham Laboratory. Despite a lack of formal university education, Adams worked for organizations like the
Telecommunications Research Establishment
The Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force (RAF) ...
and the
Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the 1940s and early 1950s. He served as acting director and eventually as elected director of
CERN, from 1976 until 1981.
Biography
Early life
Born in
Kingston, Surrey
Kingston upon Thames (hyphenated until 1965, colloquially known as Kingston) is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. It is situated on the River Thames and southwest of Charing Cross. It is notable as ...
on May 24, 1920. He attend Eltham College from 1931 until 1936, after which he began to work for Siemens Laboratories in Woolwich. He continued studying at the South East London Technical Institute until 1939 earning a
Higher National Certificate. This was the end of his formal education receiving no university education.
Professional career
at Siemens, his work was concerned with the acoustic properties of telephones. Between 1940 and 1945, he worked the
Telecommunications Research Establishment
The Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force (RAF) ...
being particularly responsible for developing the microwave radar After, Adams moved to the
Atomic Energy Research Establishment until 1953. In 1953, he moved once more to the new
CERN Laboratory, serving in the General Physics Division as the engineer in charge of designing and building the
Harwell Synchrocyclotron, Europe's first large accelerator
which operated successfully for 30 years until shutdown due to lack of funding. Also in late 1953, he was noted serving as a full staff member of the Proton Synchrotron Group. As CERN's proton synchrotron became fully operational in 1959, Adams was important to defining the methods and organization by which physicists would conduct testing. His work organizing CERN's administrative structure and measurement equipment were prepared for experimentation leading up until the synchrotron's start up at the end of 1959.
After the death of
Prof. C. J. Bakker, CERN Director-General, in April 1960, the Council of CERN appointed Adams to the post of acting Director-General. He held this post until August 1961 when he returned to the UK as director of the
Culham Fusion Laboratory, and then from 1966 to 1971 he was a member of the
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ...
. He also became a Fellow of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
. Returning to CERN in 1971 as Director-General of Laboratory II, he led the design of the
Super Proton Synchrotron. He split the duties of CERN Director General with
Willibald Jentschke and then
Léon Van Hove
Léon Charles Prudent Van Hove (10 February 1924 – 2 September 1990) was a Belgian physicist and a Director General of CERN. He developed a scientific career spanning mathematics, solid state physics, elementary particle and nuclear physics t ...
during the 1970s. His careful management of CERN's new projects were important to getting funding and approval from CERN's council. His designs were cautious and focused on reliability while providing the ability for new improvements to be built. The
Super Proton Synchrotron was able to reach energies of 540 GeV.
With the reorganization of CERN in 1976, he became the executive Director-General, working on obtaining funding for the
LEP collider. The new collider used magnet systems for acceleration that were designed by Adams in his previous accelerators. He was knighted in 1981.
Personal life
Adams married Renie Warburton on January 24, 1943. They had two daughters.
Awards and honors
* Rontegen Prize, University of Giessen (1960)
* D. Sc. (Honorary), University of Geneva
*
Duddell Medal
The Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize (previously the Duddell Medal and Prize until 2008) is a prize awarded biannually by the Institute of Physics for distinguished contributions to the application of physics in an industrial, commercial or business ...
, Physical Society (1961)
* D. Sc. (Honorary), University of Birmingham (1961)
* Fellow of Royal Society (1963)
*
Leverhulme Medal (Royal Society)
The Leverhulme Medal is awarded by the Royal Society every three years "for an outstandingly significant contribution in the field of pure or applied chemistry or engineering, including chemical engineering". It was created in 1960 after a donatio ...
(1972)
*
Royal Medal, Royal Society (1977)
*
Knight Bachelor
The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are th ...
(1981)
John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science
The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science (JAI), an
accelerator physics
Accelerator physics is a branch of applied physics, concerned with designing, building and operating particle accelerators. As such, it can be described as the study of motion, manipulation and observation of relativistic charged particle beams ...
research institute comprising researchers from
Royal Holloway, University of London,
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
and
Imperial College London
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
is named in his honour.
A main road ("Route Adams") in CERN's Prevessin site is also named after him.
See also
*
References
External links
*
The John Adams Accelerator Institute
1920 births
1984 deaths
20th-century British engineers
English physicists
Accelerator physicists
English nuclear physicists
People associated with CERN
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Fellows of the Royal Society
Foreign Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Royal Medal winners
British expatriates in Switzerland
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