Lyn Evans - A Big-C Creative Creating Big Things

Lyn Evans is not a household name, not by a long shot. Most people have no idea who he is or what he has done; people should definitely know this man, however. Lyn Evans is the project director for the large hadron collider at CERN in Switzerland.

 

 Source: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64472000/jpg/_64472346_lynevans.jpg

 What is the large hadron collider (LHC)? It is a 27-kilometer long circular piece of machinery that lies 175 meters underground. It is a particle accelerator, used to simulate the beginnings of the universe by accelerating particles to near the speed of light and colliding them. What you get is something that looks like this model:

 Source: http://www.bnl.gov/today/body_pics/2010/09/ispy-run139779-evt4994190-v1-HR.jpg

 To people like you and me, this just looks like a mass of intersecting, squiggly lines. To Evans, though, this provides insight into how the universe began. The LHC has pioneered breakthroughs with the discovery of antimatter and the Higgs Boson, which are both part of larger physics theories trying to describe the rules of the world in which we live.

This is where Evan’s creativity is shown. There can be absolutely no doubt that he is a big-C creative. With 10,000 scientists collaborating, he led the entire community of physicists, scientists in general, and even the entire world into a new age of scientific discovery. His mastery of physics allowed him to progress from pro-C to big-C rather quickly and to wow the world with new discoveries.

Evans first began his study of physics at Swansea University, where he got his Ph.D. He then went to CERN as a Research Fellow, where he eventually was given a full time job and has stayed there since.

His work is relatable to Einstein because Einstein derived equations from thought experiments (which could not be performed in any physical capacity on Earth), just as Evans has done. The theories surrounding the LHC were previously untestable. Evans and his team of scientists made it possible to test those theories (specifically, String Theory) and give indication as to whether they are true or false. Ultimately, Einstein posed questions that could not be demonstrated, and Evans provided a new way to demonstrate physical phenomena to scientists whose theories were previously indemonstrable.

 

 Source: http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/fig1.jpg

Although Lyn Evans is currently relatively unknown to the world, it is a name that should be honored. Lyn Evans enabled thousands of scientists to further their research while also satisfying his curiosity about the inner mechanisms of the universe. Evans truly is an innovator, and a physicist to be a proud of.

Works Cited

Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York: Basic, 1993. Print.

"Lyndon Rees Evans, CBE, FRS." Lyndon Evans: 1956. Web. 12 Feb. 2015. <http://www.abgs.org.uk/FormerPupils/LynEvans