Come along to R22 Pickavance Lecture Theatre or join online to hear from Professor Philip Burrows (Department of Physics, University of Oxford), on the subject of particle accelerators.

Date: Thursday 12th February 2026

Time: 14:00 – 15:00

There will be coffee/tea served in R22 Coffee Lounge at 15:00. All welcome.

Campus members with RAL site passes wishing to attend in person, please go straight to Pickavance Lecture Theatre.

Campus members without RAL site passes and non-campus members wishing to attend, please use the Zoom link to attend the talk remotely.

Particle accelerators are well known as tools of discovery in many areas of science. Perhaps the best-known application is in subatomic physics where they provide probes of the structure of matter down to the quark level (and possibly beyond?).

In addition, accelerators are used to produce intense beams of photons, neutrons and muons which can be used for determining structure at the atomic and molecular level, with applications ranging from materials science to structural biology.

Perhaps less directly obvious applications, but with enormous societal benefits, are in industry, medicine, security and energy generation. In this Lawson Lecture, Prof. Burrows will give an overview of particle accelerators and their many applications, from making Higgs bosons to curing cancer.