John Ellis

Who is John Ellis?

Jonathan Richard Ellis CBE FRS is a British theoretical physicist who is currently Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London.

After completing his secondary education at Highgate School, he attended King's College, Cambridge, earning his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics in 1971. After brief post-doc positions at SLAC and Caltech, he went to CERN and has held an indefinite contract there since 1978. He was awarded the Maxwell Medal and the Paul Dirac Prize by the Institute of Physics in 1982 and 2005 respectively, and is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1985 and of the Institute of Physics since 1991. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Southampton, and twice won the First Award in the Gravity Research Foundation essay competition. He is also Honorary Doctor at Uppsala University.

Ellis' activities at CERN are wide-ranging. He was twice Deputy Division Leader for the theory division, and served as Division Leader for 1988–1994. He was a founding member of the LEPC and of the LHCC; currently he is chair of the committee to investigate physics opportunities for future proton accelerators, and is a member of the extended CLIC Steering Committee.