Institute of Physics honours Emeritus Professor Roger Barlow

A HUDDERSFIELD Emeritus Professor who twenty five years ago helped initiate the Particle Physics Masterclasses in which hundreds of thousands of school children worldwide have participated, has been honoured for distinguished contributions to physics outreach and education.

Professor Roger Barlow has been awarded the prestigious Lise Meitner Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics (IOP) which, in light of Professor Barlow’s personal contribution to the advancement of physics as a discipline and a profession, has also elected him to IoP Fellow.

The IOP is the leading professional body for practising physicists, in the UK and Ireland. Their annual awards proudly reflect the wide variety of people, places, organisations and achievements that make physics such an exciting discipline.

The Particle Physics Masterclasses

Today, the International Particle Physics Masterclasses are so well established you would be forgiven for presuming they have always been there. As many as 10,000 school students in 37 countries participate each year at an international level. But there was indeed a time when there were no such things as masterclasses in particle physics and they had to be invented.

The award’s citation by the IoP states just how ground-breaking the classes were. Innovations that seem self-evident now, such as utilising the worldwide web and clusters of desktop PCs which had only just started to appear at UK universities, Professor Barlow introduced for the first time as part of the Masterclasses.

Particle physics was also a new part of the school curriculum and relatively unfamiliar to many teachers. The Masterclasses Professor Barlow created with the help of his colleague Professor Ken Long, helped inform and inspire teachers, an impact enhanced by the Summer Institutes for A-level Physics Teachers which Professor Barlow proposed, organised and funded with a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council grant.

National soon became international

Following the phenomenal success of the first Masterclasses in 1997 the idea proceeded to spread rapidly.  As a result of Professor Barlow’s organisation through the IOP’s High Energy Particle Physics Group, soon every UK particle physics group was running its own event. National soon became international.

Applications to study physics in UK universities rose soon after as did interest and excitement from the public and the media about the Large Hadron Collider and Higgs Boson.

“I have to admit,” said Professor Barlow, “while the masterclasses cannot claim all of the credit for this, they can certainly claim some.”

By the early 2000s, the web-based masterclass analysis had been translated into several other languages and was being used in masterclasses across Europe and the US.  The masterclass idea has since spread to other areas of physics, such as astronomy meaning more students than ever before are now reaping the benefits.

A distinguished scientific career

Professor Barlow joined the University of Huddersfield in 2011 where he established the International Institute for Accelerator Applications which is now part of Huddersfield's Ion Beam Centre.

Professor Barlow was a leading figure in the field of particle physics and accelerators throughout his distinguished scientific career. His research had a direct and profound effect on people’s lives, such as the use of particle beams for therapeutic and palliative care of cancer patients.