Memorial for Ian Shipsey (1959-2024)

 

Professor Ian Shipsey was one of the leading experimental particle physicists of his generation. He was a member of the Purdue faculty from January 1990 until September 2013. Professor Shipsey was named the Julian Schwinger Distinguished Professor of Physics in 2007.

In 2013, Professor Shipsey moved to Oxford as the Henry Moseley Centenary Professor of Physics. At Oxford, he was later elected Head of the Department of Physics in 2018 and re-elected in 2023.

Born in London, Professor Shipsey took his first degree at Queen Mary in 1982 and his PhD at Edinburgh University in 1986, mostly working on the CERN NA31 experiment. Ian was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2022.

Ian’s work dealt with the study of subatomic particles to probe the ‘Standard Model’ of the building blocks of matter and the forces through which they interact. More recently, Ian’s research group has characterized with important new detail the decay of the Higgs boson, discovered at CERN in 2012.

He was a powerful supporter of improving provisions for disabled students and colleagues, having himself been profoundly deaf since 1989.

Professor Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, said, “Ian was one of a kind. He was one of the most impactful particle physicists of his generation: he transformed our understanding of heavy quarks, discovered new physics around b-quark & Higgs bosons and broke new ground in understanding dark matter. Ian was charming, determined, funny, energetic and an indefatigable advocate for world-leading physics.”

Adapted from source https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-10-08-professor-ian-shipsey-frs