Chris Llewellyn Smith on nuclear fusion

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2014

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith chats to Jim Al-Khalili about quarks, bosons, and running the biggest experiments in history. In the late 60s and early 70s Chris was one of the theoretical physicists who were busy sketching what would become known as the standard model of particle physics. An early believer in the physical reality of the "Quark Model", Chris's work helped confirm that the protons and neutrons at the centre of atoms are themselves made up of 3 quarks. He was also influential in showing that Peter Higgs' theory of mass was not just sufficient, but also necessary. So when later he was made Director General of CERN, he was well placed to know, and to explain to the heads of the member states, that investing in the construction of something called the Large Hadron Collider would be a scientifically fruitful thing to do. Indeed, it has been said that there would be no LHC without Chris' calm international scientific diplomacy. Since then, Chris has been influential in several other international big-physics collaborations, including the world's most ambitious nuclear fusion programme, ITER.

Transcript

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0:44.0	When it comes to big science, it doesn't get any bigger than the sort of physics with which my
0:49.2	guest today has been involved during his illustrious career and neither does the subject
0:54.2	matter get any smaller. So Chris Luellen Smith was the director general of Cern in
0:59.6	Geneva in the 90s. He put together the proposal, secured funding and oversaw the beginning
1:06.6	of construction of the large Hadron Collider. He's run the world's biggest nuclear
1:12.0	fusion research laboratory of its kind in
1:14.7	column in the UK and he's been chairman of what will be its much larger successor
1:19.9	Eater currently being built in France. Back in the 60s and 70s he was at the forefront of developing
1:26.1	the theory behind what we now call the standard model of particle physics. But perhaps
1:31.8	it's the sphere of what one might call international scientific
1:35.3	diplomacy that has been his particular forte over the years. Chris, welcome to the
1:40.4	life scientific. Hello. With the first- class degree in physics from Oxford, graduating in 1964, you could have done almost anything,
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