British particle physicist Norman McCubbin dies aged 77
Norman McCubbin, a British experimental particle physicist who worked on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, has died aged 77. He spent his last working years directing the particle physics department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
Norman McCubbin, a British scientist working in experimental particle physics, has died at the age of 77. His death was reported in an obituary in The Guardian written by his brother.
McCubbin took part in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland. From 2007 until he retired in 2012, he directed the particle physics department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire. He then became an undergraduate tutor at St Anne's College, Oxford, and held that post until his death.
Education and early career
McCubbin was born in Pinner, Middlesex, to an accountant father, and the family later lived in Leicester, Kenya, Lesotho and Taiwan. He himself attended Repton school in Derbyshire as a boarder. At New College, Oxford, he earned a first-class physics degree and later a PhD.
Between 1973 and 1979 he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Lancaster and then at RAL, working with the laboratory on the first hadron collider at Cern to study the dynamics of proton-proton collisions. At Cern he later concentrated on collisions of heavy ions.
Leadership roles
From 1990 to 1999, McCubbin led RAL's Zeus experiment in Hamburg, which studied the structure of the proton. From 1999 to 2003 he served as computing coordinator for the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He subsequently became divisional head of RAL's particle physics department, and in 2007 its director.
Teacher and family man
At Oxford, McCubbin was a popular tutor who relished core subjects such as thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, relativity and symmetries. He also answered questions on gravity, centrifugal force and quantum entanglement, by video from New Zealand, from his seven-year-old great-nephew.
The author of the obituary says family and friendship always came first for him. He is survived by two brothers, two nieces, two nephews, three great-nephews and a great-niece.
