physics

James Pinfold

James Pinfold is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand James Pinfold rather than just read about it. In short: James Lewis Pinfold (born 1950 in Ealing, West London) is a British-Canadian physicist, specializing in particle physics. Education and career Pinfold graduated in physics in 1972 with a B.Sc. from Imperial College London and in 1977 with a Ph.D. from the University of London.

Key takeaways

James Pinfold belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect James Pinfold to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of James Pinfold from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

James Lewis Pinfold (born 1950 in Ealing, West London) is a British-Canadian physicist, specializing in particle physics.

Education and career Pinfold graduated in physics in 1972 with a B.Sc. from Imperial College London and in 1977 with a Ph.D. from the University of London. His Ph.D. thesis was on weak neutral currents, stemming from his work as part of the Gargamelle discovery team. From 1977 to 1989 he held research assistant and senior research assistant positions at CERN (near Geneva) and Fermilab (near Chicago). From 1989 to 1992 he was an associate professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. At the University of Alberta, he was from 1992 to 1996 an associate professor and from 1996 to 2016 a full professor, and he is since 2016 a distinguished university professor. From 1995 to 2004 he was the University of Alberta's Centre for Subatomic Research (renamed in 2006 the Centre for Particle Physics). Since 2005 he has held a visiting professorship at King's College London. He frequently travels back and forth between the University of Alberta and CERN in Geneva. He is the author or co-author of over 1250 citable publications and has given over 220 invited talks. Pinfold was from 1988 to 1989 the spokesperson for CERN's WA88 experiment. From 1987 to 1992 he was the spokesperson for the MODAL experiment at CERN's Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP). He was one of the founders in the 1990s of the ATLAS experiment involved in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) discovery of the Higgs boson. From 2000 to 2002 he was the deputy spokesperson for ATLAS-Canada. Since 2000 he is the leader and spokesperson for the MoEDAL experiment. From 2004 to 2010 he was the deputy co-spokesperson for the SLIM experiment. In 2007, he won an award from ASTech (Alberta Science & Technology Leadership Foundation) for his leadership in starting the Alberta Large-area Time-coincidence Array, or ALTA, Project. This educational and research project "involves spreading out many cosmic-ray detectors over vast areas, connecting them through the Internet, and synchronising their readings with an integrated GPS system. Most of the detectors are run by high school students". In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). In 2025, he was a recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as a member of the ATLAS Collaboration.

Selected publications Hasert, F.J.; et al. (1973). "Search for elastic muon-neutrino electron scattering". Physics Letters B. 46 (1): 121–124. Bibcode:1973PhLB...46..121H. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(73)90494-2. 1973 Dowler, B.; et al. (2002). "Performance of the ATLAS hadronic end-cap calorimeter in beam tests". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 482 (1–2): 94–124. Bibcode:2002NIMPA.482...94D. doi:10.1016/S0168-9002(01)01338-9. Cojocaru, C.; et al. (2004). "Hadronic calibration of the ATLAS liquid argon end-cap calorimeter in the pseudorapidity region in beam tests". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 531 (3): 481–514. arXiv:physics/0407009. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2004.05.133. S2CID 17438653. Acharya, B.; et al. (2014). "The physics programme of the MoEDAL experiment at the LHC". International Journal of Modern Physics A. 29 (23). arXiv:1405.7662. Bibcode:2014IJMPA..2930050A. doi:10.1142/S0217751X14300506. S2CID 53052454. Burdin, S.; Fairbairn, M.; Mermod, P.; Milstead, D.; Pinfold, J.; Sloan, T.; Taylor, W. (2015). "Non-collider searches for stable massive particles". Physics Reports. 582: 1–52. arXiv:1410.1374. Bibcode:2015PhR...582....1B. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2015.03.004. S2CID 118333394. Acharya, B.; et al. (2017). "Search for Magnetic Monopoles with the MoEDAL Forward Trapping Detector in 13 TeV Proton-Proton Collisions at the LHC". Physical Review Letters. 118 (6) 061801. arXiv:1611.06817. Bibcode:2017PhRvL.118f1801A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.061801. hdl:10138/178854. PMID 28234515. S2CID 43118193. Avoni, G.; Bruschi, M.; Cabras, G.; Caforio, D.; Dehghanian, N.; Floderus, A.; Giacobbe, B.; Giannuzzi, F.; Giorgi, F.; Grafström, P.; Hedberg, V.; Manghi, F. Lasagni; Meneghini, S.; Pinfold, J.; Richards, E.; Sbarra, C.; Cesari, N. Semprini; Sbrizzi, A.; Soluk, R.; Ucchielli, G.; Valentinetti, S.; Viazlo, O.; Villa, M.; Vittori, C.; Vuillermet, R.; Zoccoli, A. (2018). "The new LUCID-2 detector for luminosity measurement and monitoring in ATLAS". Journal of Instrumentation. 13 (7) P07017. Bibcode:2018JInst..13P7017A. doi:10.1088/1748-0221/13/07/P07017. Acharya, B.; et al. (2019). "Magnetic Monopole Search with the Full MoEDAL Trapping Detector in 13 TeV pp Collisions Interpreted in Photon-Fusion and Drell-Yan Production". Physical Review Letters. 123 (2) 021802. arXiv:1903.08491. Bibcode:2019PhRvL.123b1802A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.021802. PMID 31386510. S2CID 84842625. Acharya, B.; et al. (2022). "Search for magnetic monopoles produced via the Schwinger mechanism". Nature. 602 (7895): 63–67. arXiv:2106.11933. Bibcode:2022Natur.602...63A. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04298-1. hdl:11585/852746. PMID 35110756. S2CID 246488582.

References

External links "What are magnetic monopoles?". YouTube. CERN. August 10, 2016. (MoEDAL experiment spokesperson James Pinfold) "Professor James Pinfold (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada)". YouTube. Lomonosov Conference. 20 September 2020.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with James Pinfold

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what James Pinfold claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to James Pinfold before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about James Pinfold ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of James Pinfold

In research: James Pinfold appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses James Pinfold in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: James Pinfold is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1950 births, 20th-century British physicists, 20th-century Canadian physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for James Pinfold outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study James Pinfold in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what James Pinfold means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain James Pinfold out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is James Pinfold in simple terms?

James Lewis Pinfold (born 1950 in Ealing, West London) is a British-Canadian physicist, specializing in particle physics. Education and career Pinfold graduated in physics in 1972 with a B.Sc. from Imperial College London and in 1977 with a Ph.D. from the University of London.

Why does James Pinfold matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study James Pinfold?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on James Pinfold.