Division prize

Terms of Reference
The Nuclear and Particle Physics Division Prize shall be awarded for important recent advances in research or development, on a specific topic relevant to physics supported by the Division, which have been published or otherwise gained professional recognition within the previous five years. The prize winner will receive a certificate, together with a cheque for £500 and will be invited to give a talk at an appropriate conference.

Eligibility
Those eligible for awards should have made a contribution to the development or reputation of physics in the UK or Ireland.

Previous recipients:

2011
Christine Davies
University of Glasgow
The 2011 IOP Nuclear and Particle Physics Division Prize is awarded to Prof Christine Davies, University of Glasgow. Prof Davies is at the international forefront of developments in the field of lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Through the development of the Highly Improved Staggered Quark discretisation of the lattice, and working with collaborators, she has improved the accuracy of the calculations significantly so that fundamental parameters of QCD such as quark masses and the strong coupling constant can be determined with accuracies of 1-2%. These calculations are critical to finding inconsistencies in a precision comparison of the Standard Model with experiment that could indicate new physics.

2010
Guennadi Borissov
University of Lancaster
The 2010 IOP Nuclear and Particle Physics Division Prize is awarded to Dr Guennadi Borissov, University of Lancaster, in recognition of his highly successful campaign of measurements of processes involving production and decay of picosecond lifetime particles within the D-Zero experiment at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. These precision measurements, at the energy frontier in proton‒antiproton collisions, were thought by many to be beyond the capabilities of detectors operating in such a highly complex environment. Dr Borissov has been in the forefront of analysis efforts in the D-Zero experiment for the last decade and his work has been an inspiration to generations of post-docs and students who have worked with him, pushing at the very limits of what can be extracted from the data.

2009
Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar
The 2009 IOP Nuclear and Particle Physics Division prize is awarded to Prof A M Cooper-Sarkar, Oxford University, for her substantial contributions to our detailed understanding of the proton through the HERA Deep Inelastic Scattering experimental programme and in particular her work on combining data in ways that improve on individual experiments and allow experiment-specific uncertainties to be removed. She is an acknowledged international expert who is able to bridge the complex experimental analysis techniques and deep theoretical understanding required to compile this vast array of data into a form useful to future generations of physicists. Her work provides a lasting legacy from the highly successful HERA programme and a worthy tribute to the thousands of scientists and engineers who contributed to this unique facility.

2008
Rolf-Dietmar Herzberg
University of Liverpool
For his leadership of the UK effort in the study of super-heavy nuclei. Prof Herzberg leads a collaboration using the GREAT spectrometer at Jyväskylä, Finland, in a programme of combined in-beam and decay studies, focussing on the study of isomeric states in nobelium and fermium isotopes. This innovative work provides essential data to constrain mean field theories of the heaviest nuclei, in the search for an island of stability for nuclei with more than 100 protons.

2007
James Hinton
University of Leeds
For his substantial contributions to High Energy Astrophysics, in particular for his major role in the development of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) gamma-ray telescope, and the measurement and interpretation of very high energy gamma ray emission from the Galactic Centre and the Galactic Ridge.

2005
Nick Jelley
University of Oxford
For his role as a leader of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory since its inception, and as group leader of the Oxford group during the period of its most exciting discoveries. Nick has in particular been associated with the production of the very demanding water purification system and the rigorous radioactive assays. He has also played a major role in the development of the SNOMAN Monte Carlo and generally in the definition of the SNO experimental programme. In Oxford he has been an inspirational supervisor of research students. Overall he is recognised internationally as one of the senior figures in an experiment which has been hugely influential in the development of our current picture of neutrino properties, and surely also has important physics results still to come.

2003
Paul Campbell
University of Manchester

2001
Mike Seymour
University of Manchester

Details of the nomination process will be available when a call for nominations is made.