physics

Tara Shears

Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears rather than just read about it. In short: Tara Georgina Shears (born 1969) is a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool. Early life Shears was born in Salisbury in Wiltshire.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Tara Georgina Shears (born 1969) is a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool.

Early life Shears was born in Salisbury in Wiltshire. She remained in Wiltshire, living in Wootton Rivers and attending the co-educational comprehensive school Pewsey Vale School, where she was inspired by her chemistry teacher. The school had no sixth form, and her parents moved to Wedhampton (near Urchfont), where she attended the co-educational independent school Dauntsey's School, which offered many state scholarships at the time — many of the pupils were state-funded. At A-level she studied Maths, Physics, Chemistry and English, where she was the only female in her Physics class — not uncommon in British co-educational schools, even independent schools. She obtained A grades in all her sixth form exams. Her experience of being the only female in the Physics class would have been an advantage when she attended Imperial College London to study physics. She obtained a 1st Class honours degree in 1991. She went to the University of Cambridge to complete a PhD in Particle Physics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She completed a PPARC (Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, now the Science and Technology Facilities Council since 2007) fellowship at the Victoria University of Manchester.

Career

Particle physics Shears was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship with the University of Liverpool in 2000 to continue her work at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration at the Fermilab facility in the USA. In 2004 she joined the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator (the world's largest), for which she initiated and developed the electroweak and exotica physics working group.

Physics professor Shears became the first female Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool, where she researches the properties of bottom quarks using hadron colliders, testing the Standard Model theory in the electroweak sector, to seek answers for the reasons that there is so little antimatter in the universe. She is also employed as a science communicator, being able to promote female interest in physics as a role model.

National Leadership Shears has been Chair of the STFC's Education, Training and Careers Committee and Chair of STFC Science Board from 2020 - 2023. From 2023 - 2027, Shears is vice-president for Science and Innovation at the Institute of Physics. In 2025 it was announced that Shears will chair the physics sub-panel for the Research Excellence Framework assessment 2029.

Awards and Major Projects Shears was awarded a CERN fellowship to conduct research on the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP). In 1995 she conducted a project: A Measurement of the B"+ and B"0 Meson Lifetimes and Lifetime Ratio Using the OPAL Detector at LEP.

See also Daphne Jackson, from Peterborough, the UK's first female professor of physics (University of Surrey at age 34) Gillian Gehring (née Murray), from Nottingham, the UK's second female professor of physics Women's Engineering Society

References

External links University of Liverpool Her academic page Dr. Tara Shears - The Large Hadron Collider in 10' (with english subtitles) Tara Shears on INSPIRE-HEP

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tara Shears

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears

In research: Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears 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: Tara Shears is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1969 births, Academics of the University of Liverpool, Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tara Shears in simple terms?

Tara Georgina Shears (born 1969) is a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool. Early life Shears was born in Salisbury in Wiltshire.

Why does Tara Shears 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 Tara Shears?

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 Tara Shears.