Tejinder Virdee

Who is this?

Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee, (Punjabi: ਤਜਿੰਦਰ ਸਿੰਘ ਵਿਰਦੀ, born 13 October 1952), is a Kenyan-born British experimental particle physicist and Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is best known for originating the concept of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) alongside a few other colleagues and has been referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' of the project. CMS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1991 and now has over 3500 participants from 50 countries. In recognition of his work on CMS, Virdee has been awarded numerous prizes and distinctions. In 2007, he was awarded the IOP High Energy Particle Physics group prize and in 2009 the IOP Chadwick Medal and Prize. In 2012 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP). In 2013 he was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for "leadership in the scientific endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)", and the European Physical Society High Energy and Particle Physics Prize. In 2015 he was awarded the IOP Glazebrook Medal and Prize for his leadership of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where evidence for the Higgs boson was revealed after 20 years of research involving design, construction and data-taking. In 2017 he was granted the American Physical Society Panofsky Prize for his pioneering work and outstanding leadership in the making of the CMS experiment, and in 2020 the Blaise Pascal Medal of the European Academy of Sciences in Physics. In 2024, he was awarded the Royal Medal (Physical) of the Royal Society. The citation reads: "for extraordinary leadership and profound impact on all phases of the monumental CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, including the crucial discovery of the Higgs boson through its decays to two photons." In 2014, Virdee was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to science. Virdee has served on Scientific Advisory Committees of numerous international physics institutes and on the Physical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2020.

Career

1. 1952
   Born
2. 2009
   Won James Chadwick Medal and Prize
3. 2013
   Won High Energy and Particle Physics Prize
4. 2013
   Won Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
5. 2015
   Won Glazebrook Medal
6. 2017
   Won Panofsky Prize
7. Member of Royal Society

Trivia

• •Place of birth: Nyeri
• •Citizenship: United Kingdom
• •Known as: physicist, university teacher