Joseph David Lykken ( ; born June 17, 1957) is a theoretical physicist at the

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operat ...

. From July 1, 2014 to Sept 6, 2022 he was the Deputy Director of

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been opera ...

. He is currently leading the Fermilab Quantum Institute.

Background and education

Lykken received his Ph.D. in 1982 from M.I.T. He arrived at Fermilab in 1989, where he worked in the Fermilab Theory Division, and as a collaborator of the

Compact Muon Solenoid The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and France. The goal of the CMS experiment is to investigate a wide range ...

(CMS) experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. He is the son of David T. Lykken, noted psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...

researcher.

Research

In 1996 Lykken proposed "weak scale superstrings," which posited extra dimensions of space within the reach of particle colliders, such as the Fermilab Tevatron, and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. This, and related ideas will be subject to direct and indirect experimental tests in the coming years.

Professional activities

Lykken is a former member and subpanel chair of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, which advises the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

and the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

. He was a Trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics in

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Moun ...

. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and is former chair of the APS Division of Particles and Fields.

Selected publications

Lykken's publications are available on the INSPIRE-HEP Literature Databas

References

External links

Dr. Lykken's website at Fermilab
Washington Post article 2008-04-11
Nobel Honors Glimpse Into Universe's Design
"We'd been talking about it for years" says Lykken
Scientific publications of Joseph Lykken
on INSPIRE-HEP 1957 births Living people American string theorists 21st-century American physicists American people of Norwegian descent Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science People associated with CERN People associated with Fermilab {{US-physicist-stub