David Charlton

Education Charlton was educated at the University of Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1985. He went on to study for a PhD in Particle Physics at the University of Birmingham, which he was awarded in 1989 for work on the UA1 experiment, searching for the top quark.

Career and research Charlton's research investigates the Higgs mechanism and electroweak symmetry breaking. He is regarded as a leader in the experimental elucidation of electroweak symmetry-breaking, culminating in the observation and first characterisation of a Higgs boson, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

From 1989 to 2001, Charlton worked on the OPAL experiment of the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) at CERN, on data analysis, components of the trigger and data acquisition systems, and the identification of muons. His work helped to provide the first measurement there of the yield of Z decays, before measurement of the fraction decaying to bottom quarks. During the construction of the ATLAS experiment, he worked on hybrid readout circuits for the silicon strip sensors of the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) detector and on the first-level calorimeter trigger system.

As a professor at the University of Birmingham, he conceived and led design group studies for Year 3 undergraduate students for several years, and also introduced and taught a Year 4 module named Current Topics in Particle Physics. His lecturing was in abeyance whilst he held the position of Spokesperson at ATLAS. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) and awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) in 1994.