Tom W. B. Kibble

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Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble is a senior research investigator at The Blackett Laboratory, at Imperial College London, UK. His research interests are in quantum field theory, especially the interface between high-energy particle physics and cosmology. He has worked on mechanisms of symmetry breaking, phase transitions and the topological defects (monopoles, cosmic strings or domain walls) that can be formed. His seminal paper on cosmic strings introduced the phenomenon into modern cosmology.

He is the author, jointly with Dr Frank Berkshire of the Imperial College Mathematics Department, of a textbook on classical mechanics. The fifth edition was published by Imperial College Press in Spring 2004. Dr. Kibble is noted for his co-discovery of the Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson with Gerald Guralnik and C. R. Hagen ^[1].

He is one of the two co-chairs of an interdisciplinary research Programme funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF) on Cosmology in the Laboratory (COSLAB) which runs from 2001 to 2005. He was previously the coordinator of an ESF Network on Topological Defects in Particle Physics, Condensed Matter & Cosmology (TOPDEF).

Kibble is an avid cyclist.