In this week's Science Café Adam looks at the history of particle physics research at Swansea University and tells the story of some of the department's greatest minds.

Broadcast Tuesday 12th April at 7pm

Listen to the latest programme online

During its ninety year history the Physics Department at Swansea University has produced a succession of brilliant students who've made a major contribution to the study of particle physics and our understanding of the structure of the atom. When the department was first founded, Ernest Rutherford had only recently devised his model of the atom as a dense but tiny nucleus surrounded by electrons in regular orbits like planets around the Sun. Since then, our picture of the atom has become more complex as physicists have discovered that the atomic nucleus is made up of around a dozen different particles.

One of the first students to graduate from Swansea was also one of the finest scientific minds that Wales has ever produced. E J Williams, or 'Dessin' as he was known, pushed forward our understanding of atomic collisions and he's credited with predicting the discovery of a new atomic particle, the meson. In this week's programme science historian Dr. Neville Evans tells the story of Dessin, his contribution to physics and the early death which almost certainly robbed Wales of a Nobel Prize winner.

We also meet Swansea University's most famous physics graduate, Dr. Lyn Evans. Until his recent retirement, Lyn was Project Leader for the Large Hadron Collider, the huge circular atom smasher, 17 miles long, which lies under the Swiss-French border. The LHC is hunting for the elusive Higgs Boson, the particle which it's believed gives all other atomic particles their mass.

Adam also speaks to Prof. Mike Charlton, Senior Research Fellow in the College of Sciences about his work on antimatter and the continuing importance of Swansea University's links with CERN. And he meets Dr. Chris Allton, one of the University's world-class team of theoretical physicists who are proposing radical new models for the structure of the atom.

Links

E J Williams

Lyn Evans

Swansea University

CERN