Thomas Ypsilantis

Thomas " Tom" John Ypsilanti (* June 24, 1928 in Salt Lake City; † August 26, 2000 in Geneva) was an American experimental particle physicists.

Life and work

Ypsilanti came from a Greek -born family in Salt Lake City. He studied physics at the University of Utah (Bachelor, 1949) in Salt Lake City and at the University of California, Berkeley, where in 1952 he took his master's degree and received his doctorate in 1955, Emilio Segrè. Ypsilanti was there for the team of Owen Chamberlain, Emilio Segrè, Clyde Wiegand, in 1955 at the Bevatron discovered the antiproton. The discovery was the subject of his dissertation. After that, he was from 1955 to 1960 Assistant Professor, 1960-1965 Associate Professor and from 1967 to 1969 professor of physics at Berkeley. 1959/60 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Marconi Institute of the University of Rome and 1962/63 group leader at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. 1965/66 he was a member of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission. And 1970 to 1975, he worked as a research scientist at CERN, from 1976 to 1978 at the Nuclear Research Center of Saclay, 1978/79 at SLAC and again from 1979 to 1980 at CERN. 1980 to 1985 he was Director of Research at CNRS at the Ecole Polytechnique and 1985-1988 regular visiting professor at UCLA. 1985 to 1996 he was Director of Research at CNRS at the College de France and in research director at the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisico Nucleare ( INFN ), the University of Bologna. But during the whole time he was always well to stay at CERN.

At CERN, he developed with Jacques Séguinot from 1977, the RICH detectors ( Ring Imaging Cherenkov Counter), which focused the Cherenkov light and was first used on a larger scale in the Delphi experiment of the LEP ring at CERN in high-energy physics (approved 1983). She collaborated with Tord Ekelöf. Later, he also designed a neutrino detector ( Aqua Rich), which he called Superkamiokande with glasses ( superkamiokande with spectacles ) (CERN Report 1998). He was with faster RICH technique with a concave spherical mirror, HPD detectors ( Hybrid Photo Diodes) on the mirror and in the focal plane and a large water tank ( 50 tonnes in the proposal for the Gran Sasso Observatory ) equipped. He also worked a variety of other detector projects in high energy physics and astroparticle physics, for example on calorimetry with liquid noble gases (xenon ) in the LAA project ( Lepton Asymmetry Analyzer, 1989 ), the HELLAZ detector for solar neutrinos (from 1990) and he made important contributions to the LHCb.

In 1986 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala.

In 1995 he became editor of Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research.