John Gordon Rushbrooke (1936–2003) was an Australian

particle physicist Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standa ...

. The son of Neil and Vera Rushbrooke, with four sisters, Rushbrooke was born in

Geelong Geelong ( ) (Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River, ...

in 1936 and was brought up there. He attended

Geelong Grammar School , motto_translation = 1 Corinthians 1:30: "For us, Christ was made wisdom"(1 Corinthians 1:30: Christ, who has been made for us in wisdom) , city = Corio, Victoria , country = Australia , coordinates = , ty ...

, where he was at the top of every class. Rushbrooke went on to Trinity College in Perth, graduating with a BSc in 1956. This was followed by a master's degree at Australia's first

cyclotron A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Janu ...

, where he began his work as a high-energy physicist. His thesis from the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

was on

Coulomb The coulomb (symbol: C) is the unit of electric charge in the International System of Units (SI). In the present version of the SI it is equal to the electric charge delivered by a 1 ampere constant current in 1 second and to elementary char ...

excitations of the atom. In 1959 Rushbrooke won a scholarship that took him to

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

. Following work at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

and completion of his PhD, Rushbrooke spent a year at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

in Geneva before returning to Cambridge to take up a fellowship at

Downing College Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

as director of studies in physics. For five years from 1977 he was on leave from his duties at Cambridge, based again at CERN, where he became the spokesperson for the UA5 collaboration. The UA5 experiment searched for

Centauro event A Centauro event is a kind of anomalous event observed in cosmic-ray detectors since 1972. They are so named because their shape resembles that of a centaur: i.e., highly asymmetric. If some versions of string theory are correct, then high-e ...

s at the Proton-Antiproton Collider, a modification of the

Super Proton Synchrotron The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland. History The SPS was de ...

. In 1983 Rushbrooke was promoted to a readership in physics at Cambridge, and in 1991 the university conferred on him a second doctorate. During the 1990s Rushbrooke worked on commercializing technology from scanning techniques developed at CERN. He moved to California in 2000 after securing a contract with a major US company. Rushbrooke died in California in 2003, at the age of 67.

References

External links

List of publications, Inspire HEP
Australian physicists Australian academics People associated with CERN 1936 births 2003 deaths Fellows of Downing College, Cambridge People educated at Geelong Grammar School {{Physicist-stub