page_title: John Wheater
section_title: Career and research
hierarchical_section_title: John Wheater / Career and research
caption_attribution_description: English: Beecroft Building, University of Oxford Department of Physics, Parks Road, Oxford, England (Hawkins\Brown Architects, opened 2018)
context_page_description: John Feather Wheater is a British physicist, and Professor specialising in particle physics at the University of Oxford.
context_section_description: Wheater was a Junior Research Fellow in theoretical physics at Christ Church during 1981–84. In 1984–85, he was a lecturer in theoretical particle physics at Durham University.
  In 1985, Wheater joined the academic staff of the Department of Physics at Oxford University, initially as a lecturer. He was also been a Fellow of University College, Oxford from 1985 until 2015. During 1990 and later in 2003–4, he was on sabbatical leave spent at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1993, he was awarded the Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics. He was Head of the Physics Department between 2010 and 2018. In 2015, he was appointed as Professor of Physics. Wheater leads the Particle Theory Group.
  During Wheater's term as Head of the Department of Physics, the new Beecroft Building in the department was initiated. It was opened in 2018 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (who formerly studied physics at Oxford), in the presence of Wheater as Head of Department, Professor Louise Richardson (Vice-Chancellor of Oxford), Lord Patten of Barnes (Chancellor of Oxford), and Adrian Beecroft (part-funder of the building).
  In 2018–19, Wheater was invited to be a Visiting Professor at the QMATH-center in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
  Wheater's former doctoral students include Neil Ferguson, who initially studied physics at Oxford University, but later became an epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London and was an influential scientist in the UK government strategy for the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
caption: The Beecroft Building, part of the Department of Physics, opened in 2018 under Wheater's leadership
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