Tom Kibble

**Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman** "**Tom**" **Kibble** (23 December 1932 &ndash; 2 June 2016), was a British theoretical physicist, senior research investigator at The Blackett Laboratory, at Imperial College London,&nbsp;UK and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College. He was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to physics.

His research interests were in quantum field theory (the quantum theory of elementary particles) and in the connections between high-energy particle physics and cosmology (the study of the physical universe). He is best known as one of the first to describe the Higgs mechanism (explaining how some but not all elementary particles have mass), and for his research on topological defects (roughly - points, lines or surfaces in space where there is a jump). From the 1950s he was concerned about the nuclear arms race and from 1970 took leading roles in promoting the social responsibility of the scientist.

## Early life and education
Kibble was born in Madras, India, and was the grandson of William Bannerman, an officer in the Indian Medical Service, and the author Helen Bannerman. He was educated at Doveton Corrie School in Madras and then in Edinburgh, Scotland, at Melville College and at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc in 1955, MA in 1956 and a PhD in 1958. Kibble was married to Anne Allan from 1957 until her death in 2005. They had three children.

## Career
Kibble worked on symmetry breaking (simple example - a ball at the top of a hill might roll down in any direction), phase transitions (simple example - water turning to ice as it freezes) and topological defects (roughly - points, lines or surfaces in space where there is a jump).

He is most noted for his co-discovery of the Higgs mechanism (explaining how some but not all elementary particles have mass) and prediction of the Higgs boson (a massive particle central to the Higgs mechanism) with Gerald Guralnik and C.&nbsp;R.&nbsp;Hagen (GHK). As part of Physical Review Letters 50th anniversary celebration, the journal recognized this discovery as one of the milestone papers in PRL history. For this discovery Prof. Kibble was awarded the American Physical Society's 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics. While widely considered to have authored the most complete of the early papers on the Higgs theory, GHK were controversially not included in the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2014, Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs expressed disappointment that Kibble had not been chosen to share the Nobel Prize with François Englert and himself.

Kibble pioneered the study of the formation of topological defects in the very early times of the existence of the universe. An influential model of defect formation across a certain kind of phase transition is known as the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. His paper on cosmic strings (line defects of space on a cosmic scale)  introduced the idea into modern cosmology.

He was one of the two co-chairs of a research programme funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF) on Cosmology in the Laboratory (COSLAB) which ran from 2001 to 2005. He was previously the coordinator of an ESF Network on Topological Defects in Particle Physics, Condensed Matter & Cosmology (TOPDEF). which is still in print (as of 2016), now in its 5th edition and co-authored with Frank Berkshire.

## Recognition
Kibble was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1980), of the Institute of Physics (1991), and of Imperial College London (2009). He was also a member of the American Physical Society (1958), the European Physical Society (1975) and the Academia Europaea (2000).

In addition to the Sakurai Prize, Kibble has been awarded the Hughes Medal (1981) of the Royal Society, the Rutherford (1984) and Guthrie Medals (1993) of the Institute of Physics, the Albert Einstein Medal (2014) and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2014). He was awarded a CBE in the 1998 Birthday Honours and was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to physics. and from 1970 he took leading roles in several organisations promoting the social responsibility of the scientist.

## References
## Other websites
* Imperial College People 
* 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics Recipient
*Papers written by T. Kibble in the INSPIRE-HEP database
* T. W. B. Papers written by T. Kibble on the Mathematical Reviews website
* Papers written by T. Kibble in Physical Review
* Physical Review Letters&nbsp;– 50th Anniversary Milestone Papers
* Imperial College London on PRL 50th Anniversary Milestone Papers