Tom Kibble

Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble CBE

Sir
FRS MAE[1] (/ˈkɪbəl/; 23 December 1932 – 2 June
Tom Kibble
2016) was a British theoretical physicist, senior
CBE FRS MAE
research investigator at the Blackett Laboratory
and Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Born Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble
Imperial College London.[4] His research interests 23 December 1932
were in quantum field theory, especially the Madras, Madras Presidency, British
interface between high-energy particle physics India
and cosmology. He is best known as one of the Died 2 June 2016 (aged 83)
first to describe the Higgs mechanism, and for his London, England
research on topological defects. From the 1950s Nationality British
he was concerned about the nuclear arms race and Alma mater University of Edinburgh (BSc, MA,
from 1970 took leading roles in promoting the PhD)
social responsibility of the scientist.[5]
Known for Einstein–Cartan–Sciama–Kibble theory
Kibble–Zurek mechanism
Higgs boson
Early life and education Higgs mechanism
Cosmic strings
Kibble was born in Madras, in the Madras
Spontaneous symmetry breaking
Presidency of British India, on 23 December
1932.[6][7] He was the son of the statistician Awards FRS (1980)[1]
Walter F. Kibble, and the grandson of William Hughes Medal (1981)
Bannerman, an officer in the Indian Medical Rutherford Medal and Prize (1984)
Service, and the author Helen Bannerman. His
Guthrie Medal and Prize (1993)
father was a mathematics professor at Madras
Sakurai Prize (2010)
Christian College, and Kibble grew up playing on
the grounds of the college and solving Dirac Medal (2013)
mathematics puzzles his father gave him.[8] He Albert Einstein Medal (2014)
was educated at Doveton Corrie School in Madras Isaac Newton Medal (2016)
and then in Edinburgh, Scotland, at Melville
Scientific career
College and at the University of Edinburgh.[4] He
Fields Theoretical physics
graduated from the University of Edinburgh with
Quantum field theory
a BSc in 1955, MA in 1956 and a PhD in
1958.[6][9] Institutions Imperial College London
Thesis Topics in quantum field theory: 1.
Schwinger's action principle; 2.
Career Dispersion relations for inelastic
scattering processes (https://www.era.li
Kibble worked on mechanisms of symmetry b.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/7695) (1958)
breaking, phase transitions and the topological
defects (monopoles, cosmic strings or domain
walls) that can be formed. Doctoral John Polkinghorne
advisor
He is most noted for his co-discovery of the
Doctoral John W. Barrett[2]
Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson with Gerald
students Seifallah Randjbar-Daemi
Guralnik and C. R. Hagen.[10][11][12] As part of
Jonathan Ashmore[3]
Physical Review Letters 50th anniversary
celebration, the journal recognised this discovery
as one of the milestone papers in PRL history.[13] He was awarded the American Physical Society's 2010
J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics.[14]

While Guralnik, Hagen, and Kibble are widely considered to have authored the most complete of the
early papers on the Higgs theory, they were controversially not included in the 2013 Nobel Prize in
Physics.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][8]

In 2014, Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs expressed disappointment that Kibble had not been chosen to share
the Nobel Prize with François Englert and himself.[22]

Kibble pioneered the study of topological defect generation in the early universe.[23] The paradigmatic
mechanism of defect formation across a second-order phase transition is known as the Kibble-Zurek
mechanism. His paper on cosmic strings introduced the phenomenon into modern cosmology.[24]

He was one of the two co-chairs of an interdisciplinary 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).[9]

Awards and honours

Kibble was an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1980,[1][25] 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).[9] In 2008, Kibble was named
an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society.[5][26]

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,[9] the Dirac Medal
(2013),[27] the Albert Einstein Medal (2014)[28] and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
(2014).[29]

He was appointed a CBE in the 1998 Birthday Honours and was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours
for services to physics.[30][31]

Kibble was posthumously awarded the Isaac Newton Medal by the Institute of Physics for his outstanding
lifelong commitment to the field.[32]

Publications
In 1966 Kibble authored a textbook, Classical Mechanics,[33] from the 3rd edition onwards with Frank H.
Berkshire. which as of 2016 is still in print and is now in its 5th edition.[34]

Personal life and voluntary roles

Kibble was married to Anne Allan from 1957 until her death in 2005. Kibble had three
children.[35][36][37][38][39]

In the 1950s and 1960s, Kibble became concerned about the nuclear arms race[40] and from 1970 he took
leading roles in several organisations promoting scientists' social responsibility.[9] In the period 1970–
1977, he was a national committee member, then treasurer, then chair of the British Society for Social
Responsibility in Science; from 1976 he was a trustee of the Science and Society Trust; from 1981 to
1991 he was a national coordinating committee member, then vice-chair, then chair of Scientists against
Nuclear Arms; he was a sponsor of Scientists for Global Responsibility; and from 1988 he was chair, and
later a trustee, of the Martin Ryle Trust.[40] He was chair of the organising committee of the Second
International Scientists' Congress, held at Imperial College in 1988, and was a co-editor of the
proceedings.[41]

In retirement, Kibble chaired the Richmond branch of the Ramblers Association.[42]

He died in London on 2 June 2016 at the age of 83.[43][8]

References
1. Anon (1980). "Sir Thomas Kibble CBE FRS" (https://web.archive.org/web/20151113152123/
https://royalsociety.org/people/thomas-kibble-11746/). royalsociety.org. London: Royal
Society. Archived from the original (https://royalsociety.org/people/thomas-kibble-11746/) on
13 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the
royalsociety.org website where:

"All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is
available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal
Society Terms, conditions and policies" (https://web.archive.org/web/20150925220
834/https://royalsociety.org/about-us/terms-conditions-policies/). Archived from the
original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.

2. "Academy of Europe: CV" (https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Kibble_Tom/CV).

3. Ashmore, Jonathan Felix (1972). Aspects of quantum field theory (https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderD
etails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.623991). ethos.bl.uk (PhD thesis). University of London.
hdl:10044/1/16203 (https://hdl.handle.net/10044%2F1%2F16203).
4. "Science – It's not Fiction; Tom Kibble" (http://issuu.com/stewartsmelvillefpnews/docs/fp_ne
ws_2014). FP News, The magazine and Annual Review of The Stewart's Melville FP Club.
Daniel Stewart's and Melville College Former Pupils Club. December 2014. p. 13. Retrieved
28 July 2015.
 5. Gauntlett, Jerome (2016). "Thomas Kibble (1932–2016) Theoretical physicist and Higgs-
boson pioneer". Nature. 534 (7609): 622. Bibcode:2016Natur.534..622G (https://ui.adsabs.h
arvard.edu/abs/2016Natur.534..622G). doi:10.1038/534622a (https://doi.org/10.1038%2F53
4622a). PMID 27357788 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27357788). S2CID 4401102 (http
s://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:4401102).
6. "Kibble, Sir Thomas (Walter Bannerman)" (https://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/
whoswho/U23025). Who's Who. Vol. 2016 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford:
A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership (https://www.ukwhoswho.com/page/
subscribe#public) required.)
7. The International Who's Who 1996–97 (60 ed.). Europa Publications. 1996. pp. 826–827.
ISBN 978-1-85743-021-9.
8. Yin, Steph (19 July 2016). "Tom Kibble, Physicist Who Helped Discover the Higgs
Mechanism, Dies at 83" (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/science/tom-kibble-physicist-
who-helped-discover-the-higgs-mechanism-dies-at-83.html). New York Times. Retrieved
19 March 2019.
9. Kibble, Tom (2011). "Thomas Walter Bannerman (Tom) Kibble – Biography" (http://www.ae-i
nfo.org/ae/User/Kibble_Tom/CV). Curriculum vitae. The Academy of Europe.
10. "Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 585 (1964) – Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles" (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20200527193724/https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/Phys
RevLett.13.585). Physical Review Letters. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.585 (https://doi.org/
10.1103%2FPhysRevLett.13.585). Archived from the original (http://prola.aps.org/abstract/P
RL/v13/i20/p585_1) on 27 May 2020. Retrieved 28 February 2008.
11. Guralnik, Gerald S. (2009). "The History of the Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble development of
the Theory of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Gauge Particles". International Journal
of Modern Physics A. 24 (14): 2601–2627. arXiv:0907.3466 (https://arxiv.org/abs/0907.346
6). Bibcode:2009IJMPA..24.2601G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009IJMPA..24.2601
G). doi:10.1142/S0217751X09045431 (https://doi.org/10.1142%2FS0217751X09045431).
S2CID 16298371 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:16298371).
12. "Guralnik, G S; Hagen, C R and Kibble, T W B (1967). Broken Symmetries and the
Goldstone Theorem. Advances in Physics, vol. 2" (https://web.archive.org/web/2015092407
2804/http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/EP/guralnik_ap_2_567_67.pd
f) (PDF). Archived from the original (http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/
EP/guralnik_ap_2_567_67.pdf) (PDF) on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 16 September
2014.
13. "Physical Review Letters – Letters from the Past – A PRL Retrospective" (http://prl.aps.org/5
0years/milestones#1964). Physical Review Letters.
14. "APS Physics – DPF – J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics" (http://www.aps.o
rg/units/dpf/awards/sakurai.cfm). aps.org. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
15. APS News - 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics and Landmark Papers in PRL History (8 October
2013) (http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/nobel13.cfm)
16. "Nobel committee's 'Rule of Three' means some Higgs boson scientists were left out."
Washington Post (8 October 2013) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-scienc
e/peter-higgs-francois-englert-win-nobel-prize-in-physics/2013/10/08/1d96aa72-2f98-11e3-8
906-3daa2bcde110_story.html)
17. "The 2013 Nobel prizes. Higgs's bosuns." Economist (12 October 2013) (http://www.econom
ist.com/node/21587771)
18. "Why are some scientists unhappy with the Nobel prizes?" Economist.com (9 October 2013)
(https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/10/economist-explains-8)
19. "House of dreams. Scientists race to explain why the Higgs boson matters." Economist.com
(3 March 2012) (http://www.economist.com/node/21548911)
20. Guralnik, G. S; Hagen, C. R (2014). "Where have all the Goldstone bosons gone?". Modern
Physics Letters A. 29 (9): 1450046. arXiv:1401.6924 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.6924).
Bibcode:2014MPLA...2950046G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014MPLA...2950046
G). doi:10.1142/S0217732314500461 (https://doi.org/10.1142%2FS0217732314500461).
S2CID 119257339 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:119257339).
21. "Gerald Guralnik, 77, a 'God Particle' Pioneer, Dies" (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/u
s/gerald-guralnik-77-a-god-particle-pioneer-dies.html). The New York Times. 3 May 2014.
22. "Early night cost Higgs credit for big physics theory" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-en
vironment-26014584). BBC News. 18 February 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
23. Kibble, T. W. B. (1976). "Topology of cosmic domains and strings". J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 9
(8): 1387–1398. Bibcode:1976JPhA....9.1387K (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976JPh
A....9.1387K). doi:10.1088/0305-4470/9/8/029 (https://doi.org/10.1088%2F0305-4470%2F
9%2F8%2F029).
24. Hindmarsh, M.; Kibble, T. (1995). "Cosmic strings". Rep. Prog. Phys. 58 (5): 477–562.
arXiv:hep-ph/9411342 (https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9411342).
Bibcode:1995RPPh...58..477H (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995RPPh...58..477H).
doi:10.1088/0034-4885/58/5/001 (https://doi.org/10.1088%2F0034-4885%2F58%2F5%2F00
1). S2CID 118892895 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:118892895).
25. Duff, M. J.; Stelle, K. S. (2021). "Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble. 23 December 1932
—2 June 2016" (https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsbm.2020.0040). Biographical Memoirs of
Fellows of the Royal Society. 70: 225–244. arXiv:2011.13257 (https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.132
57). doi:10.1098/rsbm.2020.0040 (https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsbm.2020.0040).
S2CID 227209669 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:227209669).
26. "APS Journals – Outstanding Referees" (http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees).
aps.org.
27. "Kibble, Peebles and Rees Share the 2013 Dirac Medal" (https://web.archive.org/web/20211
203142122/https://www.ictp.it/about-ictp/media-centre/news/news-archive/2013/8/dirac_201
3.aspx). International Centre for Theoretical Physics. 8 August 2013. Archived from the
original (http://www.ictp.it/about-ictp/media-centre/news/news-archive/2013/8/dirac_2013.as
px) on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
28. "Faces & Places – Kibble receives Albert Einstein Medal" (http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/
cern/57860). CERN Courier. 13 July 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
29. "Academic excellence recognised as RSE announces Royal Medals and Prizes" (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20160306184457/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/press/2014/Ro
yal-Medallists-and-Prize-Winners-2014.pdf) (PDF). Royal Society of Edinburgh. 19 March
2014. Archived from the original (https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/press/2014/Royal-
Medallists-and-Prize-Winners-2014.pdf) (PDF) on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
30. "No. 60895" (https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/60895/supplement/b2). The
London Gazette (Supplement). 14 June 2014. p. b2.
31. "Queen's birthday honours list 2014: Knights" (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/j
un/13/queens-birthday-honours-knights). the Guardian. 13 June 2014.
32. Ghosh, Pallab (1 July 2016). "Late scientist Tom Kibble wins award for particle work" (http
s://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36675894). BBC News. BBC. Retrieved
30 August 2016.
33. Kibble T W B (1966) Classical Mechanics. McGraw-Hill, London.
34. Kibble, T W B and Berkshire, F H (2004) Classical Mechanics. McGraw-Hill, London.
35. "Sad farewell to physicist who transformed our understanding of the universe" (http://www3.i
mperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_3-6-2016-10-4-5
4). Imperial College London. 3 June 2016.
36. "Higgs pioneer and IOP fellow Sir Thomas Kibble has died" (http://www.iop.org/news/16/jun/
page_67463.html). Institute of Physics. 3 June 2016.
37. "Sir Tom Kibble, physicist – obituary" (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/06/08/sir-
tom-kibble-physicist--obituary/). The Daily Telegraph. 8 June 2016.
38. Close, Frank (8 June 2016). "Sir Tom Kibble, physicist obituary. One of the world's foremost
theoretical physicists" (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/08/sir-tom-kibble-obit
uary?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience). The Guardian.
39. Gauntlett, Jerome (10 June 2016). "Sir Tom Kibble: a tribute" (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ne
wsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_9-6-2016-11-21-1). Imperial
College London.
40. SGR Sponsors (http://www.sgr.org.uk/pages/sgr-sponsors#TKibble)
41. Hassard, John; Kibble; Tom and Lewis, Patricia; (eds) (1989) Ways Out of the Arms Race:
from the nuclear threat to mutual security. World Scientific, Singapore.
42. "Arise Sir Tom!" (https://www.richmondramblers.org.uk/news/78-sir-tom-kibble.html).
Richmond Ramblers. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
43. "Tom Kibble, UK physicist who worked on Higgs boson dies, says university" (https://www.tel
egraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/02/tom-kibble-uk-physicist-who-worked-on-higgs-boson-dies-sa
ys-his/). The Daily Telegraph. 2 June 2016. Retrieved 2 June 2016.

External links
Imperial College People Official website (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/t.kibble)
2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics Recipient (http://www.aps.org/progr
ams/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?name=T.W.B.%20Kibble&year=2010)
Papers written by T. Kibble in the INSPIRE-HEP database (http://inspirehep.net/search?p=a
uthor%3AT.W.B.Kibble.1+)
T. W. B. Papers written by T. Kibble on the Mathematical Reviews website (http://www.ams.o
rg/msnmain?fn=130&fmt=hl&pg1=IID&s1=158371&v1=Kibble,)
Papers written by T. Kibble in Physical Review (http://prola.aps.org/search/field/author/Kibbl
e_T_W)
Physical Review Letters – 50th Anniversary Milestone Papers (http://prl.aps.org/50years/mil
estones#1964)
Imperial College London on PRL 50th Anniversary Milestone Papers (http://www3.imperial.a
c.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_13-6-2008-12-42-20?newsi
d=38514)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Kibble&oldid=1238302741"