6: The Man Who Built the LHC: Lyn Evans

Lyndon Rees Evans was born on July 24, 1945 in Aberdare, Wales (UK). Evans began to study chemistry; then he switched to study physics at the University College of Swansea. His doctoral thesis dealt with plasma formation in gases at high laser irradiation. Since 1969, Dr. Evans has worked at CERN. In 1971, he joined the team for the 300 GeV project, later renamed Super Proton Synchrotron under the direction of John Adams. Evans was responsible for the conversion of the SPS into a proton-antiproton accelerator, the first ring accelerator of this type worldwide. He is an expert in the design and construction of particle accelerators and worked in the US towards the completion of the first superconducting storage ring at Fermilab near Chicago. From 1988 to 1993, he worked at the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. At CERN, Evans became leader of the SPS in 1989, and later head of development for the Large Electron Positron (LEP) accelerator. In 1993, “Evans the Atom” was appointed project manager for the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. In 1995, Evans and his team presented the LHC conceptual design, a detailed baseline for its construction. Since 2001, Dr. Evans has been a Commander of the British Empire. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society.