Brian Cox (physicist)
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Professor Brian Cox (B. E. Cox), born 1968, is an experimental physicist and Royal Society University Research Fellow. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester and also works at CERN as one of the spokesmen of an international working group tasked with studying ways to upgrade the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 meters from the interaction points of the main experiments.[1]
In 1986, Cox was invited to join local rock band Dare as keyboard player. They subsequently recorded 2 albums and toured the world with Jimmy Page, Gary Moore, Europe and others. After a Spinal-Tap style fight in a Berlin bar, DARE split in 1992 and Brian left music to study Physics.
In 1993, while studying for his undergraduate degree,[2] Cox joined D:Ream who went on to have three top-ten singles in the UK charts, including a number one hit, New Labour election anthem 'Things Can Only Get Better',[3] before going their separate ways in 1997. By that time, Cox had earned a first class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester. He went on to earn a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics from that same institution, based on work for the H1 experiment at the particle accelerator HERA, at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.[4]
Cox has received many awards for his work in publicising science. In 2002, he was elected an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, an organisation whose members include Neil Armstrong and General Chuck Yeager. In 2006, Cox received the British Association Lord Kelvin award for his work in promoting science to the public. A frequent lecturer, he was keynote speaker at the Australian Science Festival in 2006. He was invited to speak at TED 2008 in Monterey, California.
Cox is also now known outside his profession through his involvement in science programmes for BBC radio and television, including In Einstein's Shadow [5], the Horizon series[6], and as a voice on the BBC's Bitesize revision programmes. He was the science adviser for the sci-fi movie Sunshine.
He was also featured on the Discovery Channel special 'Megaworld: Switzerland'.
He is married to TV presenter Gia Milinovich and has one son.
[edit] References
- ^ Cf. the FP420 group webpage.
- ^ "Rock star's new frontier", The Courier Mail, August 9, 2006.
- ^ Search for D:Ream on everyhit.co.uk on March 26, 2008.
- ^ See Cox's PhD Thesis.
- ^ BBC Radio 4: In Einstein's Shadow. Retrieved on 2006-08-23.
- ^ Large Hadron Collider and the Big Bang on BBC Horizon. Retrieved on 2007-05-01.
