Chris Quigg
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Vice President
Biographical Summary
Chris Quigg graduated in physics from Yale in 1966 and received his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1970 with J. D. Jackson. After four years in the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, he moved to Fermilab, which has been his scientific home ever since. He was for ten years Head of Fermilab’s Theoretical Physics Department, and held a joint appointment at the University of Chicago from 1974 to 1991. In 1987 he returned to Berkeley to serve for two years as Deputy Director of the Superconducting Super Collider Central Design Group. He has held visiting professorships at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Cornell, and Princeton, was Erwin Schrödinger Professor at the University of Vienna, and is a regular visitor to CERN. He has lectured at summer schools around the world, and is much in demand as a keynote and summary speaker.
Chris Quigg is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and held a Sloan Fellowship. He has just received an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. Quigg has been Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters (1980-1983), Associate Editor of Reviews of Modern Physics (1981-1993), and Editor of the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science (1994-2004). As Chair of the APS Division of Particles and Fields, he led the organization of Snowmass 2001: a Summer Study on the Future of Particle Physics. He has served the Society in numerous capacities, most recently as chair of the task force on the future of the April meeting. His work for the physics community includes membership on experimental advisory committees, visiting committees, and government advisory committees in the U.S. and abroad.
Quigg was a charter member of Saturday Morning Physics, Fermilab’s enrichment program for high school students, and served as Trustee of the Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy. He has lectured and written frequently for the general public, and was featured in The Ultimate Particle, a road movie of particle physics broadcast in France and Germany.
Research
Chris Quigg’s theoretical research has from the start been intimately linked with experiment and observation. He entered research just as waves of experimental discoveries led to intervals of splendid confusion and far-reaching insights that transformed our view of physics on small scales. Early work on inclusive reactions helped elucidate the mechanisms of particle production in high-energy collisions. The discovery of new quarks and leptons in the 1970s turned his interests to heavy-quark physics and gauge theories. Quantum-mechanical analyses of quarkonium spectra made it possible to map the strong interaction among heavy quarks. His studies of intermediate-boson production in proton-antiproton collisions informed the conception of the experiments that discovered the W and Z bosons. Quigg’s work on the strength of weak interactions at very high energies highlighted the importance of the 1-TeV scale and launched his ongoing quest for the origins of electroweak symmetry breaking. His textbook, Gauge Theories of the Strong, Weak, and Electromagnetic Interactions, shaped the outlook of a generation of graduate students and researchers.
Quigg has devoted much energy to helping to define the future of particle physics—and the new instruments needed to answer the most crucial questions. He and his collaborators provided the theoretical structure that guided searches for supersymmetric particles. “Supercollider Physics” was a comprehensive guide to the experimental opportunities that will soon be explored using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Studies of proton structure inspired by collider physics led to an exploration of the interactions of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos that has blossomed into a broad program of studies of cosmic and relic neutrinos. His current interests include the spectroscopy of newly discovered states near the charm flavor threshold, the promise of large-volume neutrino observatories, and preparing to digest the first information from experiments at the LHC.
Among Chris Quigg’s students and younger collaborators are men and women who have become prominent figures in accelerator science and astro/cosmo/particle physics, as well as particle theory.
Candidate's Statement
The scientific questions before us are thrilling. The traditional areas of physics are enjoying an unparalleled richness of opportunities, and the range of investigations that profit from a physicist’s habits of mind is broader than ever before. Physics is in stimulating conversation, and collaboration, with astronomy, biology, mathematics, and more. Physicists’ career paths are ever more diverse. It’s a wonderful time to be a physicist—and a challenging time.
The APS is the best instrument we have to build the community of physicists in universities, laboratories, and other professional settings, and to enhance opportunities for young scientists not just to participate, but to lead. We can do more to celebrate the unity of physics and to impart the cultural heritage of physics to our students. We can strengthen the profession, and amplify our contributions to society, by making the APS a more central element in the professional lives of its members.
Publications is an area in which the APS has played a defining role, in setting standards of scholarship and in preserving information for posterity and disseminating it widely. The open-access movement presents new opportunities, even as it challenges established cost-recovery models.
The benefits of international collaboration to research and to understanding between nations are immense, but the international scene is changing. Increasingly, the standards of world-class science are defined outside the United States. Brilliant experimental work by international teams in Europe and Asia has helped drive the research agenda for my field of particle physics over the past decade. Governments abroad are investing strongly in basic and applied research, enhancing their capabilities, while we in the United States are missing opportunities and doing too little to encourage our own best students. We must make a reasoned case for increased—and consistent—support for physical science, and work to enhance the reliability of the United States as a partner in international projects. We need also to work for visa policies that do not unnecessarily inhibit the free flow of researchers.
As we face today’s mix of opportunities and challenges, let us remember that being a physicist is a wonderful life. We can do more—as individuals and through the APS—to share our passion, our excitement, and our aspirations with our colleagues, our patrons, and our neighbors.
I have deep affection for the American Physical Society, and great optimism for the future of physics. If elected, it will be my high honor to work to secure a promising future for the generation to come.
