Anthony Raymond Bell One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 9 June 1952) is a British physicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He is a senior research fellow at

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

Early life and education

Anthony Raymond Bell was born on 9 June 1952 in Lincoln, England, to Raymond and Muriel Bell. He was educated at

Leeds Modern School Leeds Modern School was a school in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. History Leeds Modern School was founded on 14 July 1845 in Rossington Street as the Mathematical and Commercial School. This building in the centre of Leeds became council offi ...

and

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establish ...

, where he studied natural sciences and later gained a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in radio astronomy in 1977 for research investigating supernova remnants.

Career and research

Following his PhD, Bell worked on radar signal processing with Marconi Electronic Systems before moving to the Central Laser Facility as a laser-plasma theorist. In 1985 he was appointed a lecturer at Imperial College London. In 2007, following two years with the

Methodist Church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

, he was jointly appointed at the Clarendon Laboratory and the Central Laser Facility. Bell's research investigates plasma physics. He wrote one of four independent papers proposing the theory of cosmic ray acceleration by shocks. He showed how strong

magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to ...

is generated during particle acceleration and how it enables cosmic ray acceleration to high energy. He initiated the theory of non-local transport for heat flow in inertial confinement fusion, explained the collimation of laser-produced energetic electrons by resistively generated magnetic field, and with John G. Kirk demonstrated the possibility of electron-

positron The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. It has an electric charge of +1 '' e'', a spin of 1/2 (the same as the electron), and the same mass as an electron. When a positron collides ...

pair production in ultra-high intensity laser-plasma interactions.

Awards and honours

Bell was awarded the 2014

Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize The Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize was established in 2008 by the Institute of Physics of London for distinguished contributions to astrophysics, gravitational physics or cosmology. The medal is named after astronomer Fred Hoyle who formulated the th ...

of the Institute of Physics "for elucidating the origin and impact of cosmic rays and for his seminal contributions to electron energy transport in laboratory plasmas". In 2016 he was awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for "his development of the theory of the acceleration of charged particles in astrophysics, known as Diffusive Shock Acceleration". He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017.

Personal life

Bell married Irene Barnett in 1975; they have two sons and one daughter. He is a local preacher in the Methodist Church of Great Britain and plays the piano.

References

1952 births Living people People educated at Leeds Modern School Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge 20th-century British physicists 21st-century British physicists Donegall Lecturers of Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford British Methodists {{UK-physicist-stub