Professor David Charlton has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society, a fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists and the national Academy of Science in the UK.

charlton-david

David Charlton, Professor of Particle Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, is the Spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider and leads an international team of around 3000 scientists. This experiment was one of the two independent teams at the LHC which found, and subsequently performed the first characterizations of, the Higgs boson. Prior to holding the spokesperson position, Professor Charlton was a deputy spokesperson of ATLAS throughout the first three-year running of the LHC experiments.

Professor Charlton has been at Birmingham for almost twenty years and has many achievements to his name. His work with the OPAL experiment at the electron-positron collider LEP provided the first measurement there of the yield of Z decays, then extracted the fraction decaying to bottom quarks. He also led measurements of how W and Z particles and photons interact with each other.

Recognising the collaborative nature of the discipline, Professor Charlton said:

The election is also recognition of the high profile of the particle physics group in Birmingham which has been such a great environment and a fantastic team to work with over the years.

Professor Andy Schofield, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy said:

This is a thoroughly well-deserved recognition of his leadership and contribution to particle physics and I am sure the School joins with me in sending our congratulations to Dave on this honour.