Torsten Åkesson (7 November 1954), is a Swedish physicist and

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

Particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

who is a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

and was president of the CERN Council.

Biography

Åkesson graduated from Österportskolan in

Ystad Ystad () is a town and the seat of Ystad Municipality, in Scania County, Sweden. Ystad had 18,350 inhabitants in 2010. The settlement dates from the 11th century and has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre, and tourist attracti ...

in 1973, and was awarded his Master of Science in Engineering Physics at Lund University in 1979. He became a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

in the field of physics at Lund University in 1986 with Guy von Dardel as his supervisor with a thesis about jets. He continued with his research about jets in

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 Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. In 1996-2005 he also participated in the management team for the development of the international

ATLAS experiment ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of ...

, which among other things was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the

Higgs boson The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the excited state, quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the field (physics), fields in particl ...

in July 2012. Between 2005 and 2006 he was

Chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

of the European Committee on Future Accelerators
ECFA
, where he was responsible for developing a European strategy for particle physics. In 2007-2009 he was President of th
CERN Council
where one of his main goals was to start up their

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental ...

and start the experiments at

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...

. Åkesson is elected as a member of the

and the Royal Physiographic Society, and he was the head of the Particle Physics Division at Lund University during 2012–2018. He is since 2019 co-spokesperson for the proposed experimen
LDMX

References

External links

Åkesson's profile on INSPIRE-HEP
{{DEFAULTSORT:Åkesson, Torsten 1954 births Living people 21st-century Swedish physicists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Lund University alumni Academic staff of Lund University People from Uppsala People associated with CERN 20th-century Swedish physicists