Recent Stories
- Unborn babies 'practise' facial expressions in the womb
- Lancaster leads the way in cyber security bursary scheme
- Physicists gain insight into the UK's biggest killer
- Engineering students make finals of national start-up business competition
- Social media plagued by privacy problems, say researchers
- Lancaster Environment Centre conducts roadside pollution research for BBC
- Lancaster set to receive funding boost to stimulate UK's economy
- Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars
- How do we find out about cyber criminals?
- First, carbon footprints... now you can calculate your 'nitrogen footprint'
Lancaster Emeritus Professor Wins Prestigious Physics Prize
Image Professor David Lyth (right) at the awards ceremony with Professor Sir Peter Knight, President of the Institute of Physics
Professor David Lyth (Lancaster University physics) has won the 2012 Hoyle medal and prize from the Institute of Physics for his contributions to particle cosmology, in particular to the origin of the structure of the Universe.
The citation reads as follows:
One of the central planks of modern cosmology is the idea of in?ation. In?ationary cosmology postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. Originally introduced by Guth in order to explain the initial conditions for the hot big bang model, it has subsequently played a much more important role in providing a possible explanation for the origin of structures in the Universe, such as galaxies, galaxy clusters and cosmic microwave background anisotropies.
David Lyth has been responsible for many of the key advances in the theory of inflation, and has devised many of the analytical tools that are now widely used by the theoretical cosmology community. His work is always characterised by an incisive clarity. Although mathematically sophisticated, it always maintains contact with observation.
The methods he developed have become the standard language for those who compare observational data obtained by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) with the predictions of inflationary theory. While much work on inflation has been purely phenomenological, David has linked cosmology with fundamental physics, particularly extensions of the Standard Model.
In 2000, together with Andrew Liddle, he published a textbook on cosmological inflation and large-scale structure that has become the standard reference and an essential resource for everyone in the field. They followed this up in 2009 with the first graduate-level textbook devoted specifically to the primordial density perturbation. Both books exemplify David's dedication to accurate scholarship and his ability to make complex concepts accessible.
Tue 03 July 2012
Latest News
Unborn babies 'practise' facial expressions in the womb
Researchers from Durham and Lancaster Universities suggest that a foetus's ability to show a "pain" facial expression is a developmental process which could potentially give doctors another index of the health of a foetus.
Story supplied by LU Press Office
Mon 17 June 2013
Lancaster leads the way in cyber security bursary scheme
Lancaster is one of four UK universities selected to take part in an 'industry first' sponsorship initiative encouraging students to take up Masters-level cyber security degrees.
Story supplied by LU Press Office
Mon 10 June 2013
Physicists gain insight into the UK's biggest killer
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the UK, accounting for a third of all fatalities through illnesses such as stroke and heart disease.
Story supplied by LU Press Office
Wed 29 May 2013
Engineering students make finals of national start-up business competition
Engineering students Scott Nash, Daniel Richardson and Aaron Aboshio have won the northern heat of the Youth Entrepreneurs Scheme 'Engineering YES' competition for their spin-out renewable energy company Atlantis.
Thu 23 May 2013