Frank Kenneth Goward

Frank Kenneth Goward (1919 – March 1954) was an English scientist, specialized on aerial technologies and particle accelerator development.

Early career During World War II, Goward worked as a specialist on antenna technologies at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Malvern in England. After that, the machine was moved to Malvern, where it was improved further. This work culminated in October 1947, when Goward and his team managed to obtain a stable beam, thus creating the first fully operational synchrotron. At the first session of the provisional CERN council in May 1952, Goward was elected deputy director of the study group which was in charge of studies and investigations about the future Proton Synchrotron (PS), a novel accelerator that would reach energies of up to 10 GeV. The director of the study group was the Norwegian Odd Dahl.

With the initial PS group, Goward developed ideas and techniques to build CERN's first synchrotron. This work got a defining boost when Goward, together with his colleagues Odd Dahl and Rolf Widerøe, visited Brookhaven National Lab in the United States. There, they learned about the newly developed alternating-gradient principle. In the fall of 1953, Goward moved to Geneva permanently and became the project leader of the PS group, assembling a team to build the machine. Soon after, he became seriously ill, which forced him to return to England. He died in March 1954. John Adams, who would later become Director General of CERN, was Goward's successor as leader of the PS group.

In honour of Frank Goward, a street at CERN's main campus in Meyrin is named after him. (See list of streets at CERN).