21 Facts About Tom Kibble

Tom Kibble is best known as one of the first to describe the Higgs mechanism, and for his research on topological defects.

Tom Kibble was born in Madras, in the Madras Presidency of British India, on 23 December 1932.

Tom Kibble was the son of the statistician Walter F Kibble, and the grandson of William Bannerman, an officer in the Indian Medical Service, and the author Helen Bannerman.

Tom Kibble's father was a mathematics professor at Madras Christian College, and Kibble grew up playing on the grounds of the college and solving mathematics puzzles his father gave him.

Tom Kibble was educated at Doveton Corrie School in Madras and then in Edinburgh, Scotland, at Melville College and at the University of Edinburgh.

Tom Kibble graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc in 1955, MA in 1956 and a PhD in 1958.

Tom Kibble worked on mechanisms of symmetry breaking, phase transitions and the topological defects that can be formed.

Tom Kibble was awarded the American Physical Society's 2010 JJ Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics.

In 2014, Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs expressed disappointment that Tom Kibble had not been chosen to share the Nobel Prize with Francois Englert and himself.

Tom Kibble pioneered the study of topological defect generation in the early universe.

Tom Kibble was one of the two co-chairs of an interdisciplinary research programme funded by the European Science Foundation on Cosmology in the Laboratory which ran from 2001 to 2005.

Tom Kibble was an elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980, of the Institute of Physics, and of Imperial College London.

Tom Kibble was a member of the American Physical Society, the European Physical Society and the Academia Europaea.

In 2008, Tom Kibble was named an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society.

Tom Kibble was appointed a CBE in the 1998 Birthday Honours and was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to physics.

Tom Kibble was posthumously awarded the Isaac Newton Medal by the Institute of Physics for his outstanding lifelong commitment to the field.

In 1966 Kibble authored a textbook, Classical Mechanics, from the 3rd edition onwards with Frank H Berkshire.

Tom Kibble was married to Anne Allan from 1957 until her death in 2005.

Tom Kibble was chair of the organising committee of the Second International Scientists' Congress, held at Imperial College in 1988, and was a co-editor of the proceedings.

In retirement, Tom Kibble chaired the Richmond branch of the Ramblers Association.

Tom Kibble died in London on 2 June 2016 at the age of 83.