The John Adams Institute at Oxford’s Department of Physics is co-leading a new project that aims to design and develop new radiotherapy technologies to give more cancer patients in Sub-Saharan Africa access to treatment and to save lives.

Professor Philip Burrows has been appointed Director of the John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science (JAI) for a five-year term. The JAI is a three institute centre of excellence for advanced accelerator science and technology based in the Department of Physics at Oxford and at Royal Holloway University of London and Imperial College London.

The Department of Physics is delighted to welcome eight new Associate Professor Tutorial Fellows to its academic staff.

‘We are thrilled to be joined by such fantastic new colleagues,’ enthuses Professor Ian Shipsey, Head of Department. ‘Each one brings with them their rich experience, cutting-edge research and insightful teaching practice. As leading experts in their fields, the entire department is very excited for what the future holds. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the search committees for their excellent work in identifying such exceptional talent.’

It is with sadness that the Department of Physics announces the death of Dr William S.C. Williams on 15 April aged 90.

Bill graduated from University College London in 1950 and with a PhD in 1953. A Fulbright Scholarship took him to Stanford for a year and on returning he spent a year at General Electric. In 1955 he was appointed lecturer at the University of Glasgow.

Scientists from Oxford University’s Department of Physics are part of an international collaboration that has taken a major step forward in understanding the difference between matter and antimatter. The findings of the T2K collaboration, published today in Nature, start to reveal a basic property of neutrinos that has not been measured until now.

Scientists around the world are racing to understand more about the COVID-19-causing virus – and physicists at Oxford are no exception. 'Without physics and physicists there could be no modern technological society, from microelectronics and telecommunications, to LCD displays and PET scanners in hospitals; it is therefore not surprising that physics has much to offer in the battle against CoV2,' explains Head of Department, Professor Ian Shipsey.

For the first time scientists have observed muon ionization cooling – a major step in being able to build the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. This new muon accelerator will give us a better understanding of the fundamental constituents of matter.