Norman McCubbin, a scientist prominent in experimental particle physics, has died at 77. He was involved in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland.
McCubbin spent the final five years of his professional career as director of the particle physics department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire, retiring in 2012. Following his retirement, he became a tutor for undergraduates at St Anne’s College, Oxford, a role he held until his death.
His career included work as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Lancaster and RAL between 1973 and 1979, focusing on proton-proton collisions at CERN's first hadron collider. He later served as a senior and then principal scientific officer at CERN, concentrating on heavy ion collisions. From 1990 to 1999, McCubbin led RAL’s Zeus experiment in Hamburg, studying proton structure, and from 1999 to 2003, he was computing coordinator for the Atlas experiment at the LHC.