Dr. Anthony Thomas
The Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is pleased to announce that Dr. Anthony Thomas has accepted the position of Chief Scientist and Head of the Theory Group at Jefferson Lab.
As Chief Scientist, Dr. Thomas will help shape the future of the Laboratory and its nuclear physics program. The ongoing 6-GeV (billion electron volts) physics program, the planned 12-GeV Upgrade, the Lab's role in the national Lattice QCD (quantum chromodynamics) collaboration, and the Lab's long-range planning will all benefit from his leadership. Thomas brings to Jefferson Lab 30 years of experience in nuclear and particle physics, where he will lead an internationally recognized theory group. His interests include chiral symmetry, lattice QCD, quark models, structure functions, nuclear forces, symmetries and symmetry breaking.
"Tony's interests and expertise in nuclear theory make him an ideal choice for Jefferson Lab's Chief Scientist. He deeply understands the vital connections between experiment, theory, and advanced computation and simulation, and he will be instrumental in bringing this vision to its full development. He brings added scientific leadership not just to Jefferson Lab, but also to the U.S. nuclear physics community as a whole. From his working in partnership with the considerable talent of our User community and the present management team, I anticipate the continued rich flow of outstanding scientific results from Jefferson Lab in the coming decades. We look forward to his arrival at Jefferson Lab," says Christoph Leemann, Jefferson Lab Director.
In commenting on the appointment, Thomas said: "Jefferson Lab is the pre-eminent facility in the world for the study of hadron and nuclear structure using the electromagnetic interaction. I look forward with great excitement to the opportunity of contributing to the development of its scientific program. The Theory Group has an especially important role to play in supporting and guiding this program as well as acting as a major national and international focus for research in this field and I especially look forward to leading that effort."
Thomas comes to Jefferson Lab from a position as the Elder Professor of Physics (the Chair first held by William Henry Bragg) in the Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide (Australia). He is also the Director of the Special Research Centre for the Subatomic Structure of Matter and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics.
After completing a PhD in 1973 at Flinders University, Thomas' career took him to the University of British Columbia, TRIUMF and CERN before he returned to Australia in 1984.
He has held positions at the University of Adelaide ranging from the Chair of Physics to Head of a new Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics to the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Science and was elected to the University Council from 1991 to 1997.
Thomas is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science where he has served on Council and as Vice President. He was President of the Australian Institute of Physics from 1991 to 1993. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1987 and a Fellow of the (UK) Institute of Physics in 1996. Amongst numerous prizes and awards he has received are the Harrie Massey Medal (IoP) in 2000, the Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal (AAS) in 1997, a Research Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Research Foundation in 1992 and the Walter Boas Medal (AIP) in 1987.
Thomas has served on numerous national and international committees. He was Secretary of Commission C12 (Nuclear Physics) of IUPAP from 1996 to 2002 and has just completed a term as Chair of the National Committee for Physics (AAS). At TRIUMF he served as Chair of the Experiment Evaluation Committee for five years. More recently Thomas chaired the IUCF Visiting Committee for two years and he currently serves on the Beirat at the Nuclear Physics Institute of FZ-Juelich.
Jefferson Lab is a DOE Office of Science basic physics research laboratory located in Newport News, Va.