Robin Marshall | |
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Born | 1940 (age 76–77) |
Fields | Physics |
Institutions |
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory University of Manchester |
Alma mater | University of Manchester (BSc, PhD) |
Thesis | Development of sonic spark chambers and a study of the reaction π⁻p → π⁺π⁻ in the 1 GeV/c region (1965) |
Doctoral advisor | R. J. Ellison |
Doctoral students | Brian Cox |
Notable awards | Fellow of the Royal Society (1995) |
Website robinmarshall |
Robin Marshall (born 1940)FRS FInstP is an Emeritus Professor of Physics & Biology in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.
Marshall was educated at Ermysted's Grammar School in Skipton and the University of Manchester where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1962 followed by a PhD in 1965 for research developing sonic spark chambers to study pions supervised by R.J. Ellison.
Marshall is an innovator in the field of high-energy electron–positron annihilation, making many personal contributions. He was the first at the Positron-Electron Tandem Ring Accelerator (PETRA) e+e– collider at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) to determine the electroweak properties of leptons and then quarks. These papers become templates for other experimenters over the next ten years. He performed the definitive analysis of the world’s electron–positron data to produce what are now the textbook results for the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) ‘fine structure’ constant and the fermion electroweak interaction parameters. In 1984, he published a novel method for isolating bottom quark events and then used the method to measure the b electroweak properties, showing that it belonged to a weak isospin doublet state, and hence that the top quark exists. This was one of the most significant physics results from PETRA. He has been a group leader at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) since the 1980s, and in the 1990s prepared an experiment at the electron–proton collider, Hadron-Elektron-Ringanlage (HERA), at DESY.