Dr Thomas Binoth (1965-2010)
Professor Richard Kenway remembers Dr Thomas Binoth, Reader in Theoretical Particle Physics at the University of Edinburgh.
Dr Thomas Binoth died in an avalanche on Sunday 3 January 2010, while skiing in Switzerland.
He was born on 16 August 1965 and grew up in Maulburg, Germany.
Education
Thomas studied physics at the University of Freiburg.
He proceeded to a PhD under the supervision of Professor Jochum van der Bij, on the subject of non-perturbative effects in the Higgs sector of the Standard Model and beyond.
The PhD was awarded summa cum laude in 1997.
Varied posts
Thomas went on to postdoctoral appointments at LAPTH Annecy, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Wurzburg.
He was appointed to a Lectureship at the University of Edinburgh in 2005, and promoted to a Readership in 2009.
Thomas authored around 80 papers and conference talks, most of them relating to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, in Switzerland.
The experiments at the LHC in December 2009 were the focus of his theoretical work at Edinburgh.
Dedicated and enthusiastic
Thomas enjoyed interacting with students, both as a teacher and as a Director of Studies. He supervised both Masters and PhD students.
He was active in Edinburgh’s Particle Theory Group and helped develop links between the theory and experimental groups there.
Outside physics, Thomas loved to go to the mountains: climbing in summer and skiing in winter.
He leaves behind his partner and collaborator, Gudrun Heinrich, and many friends and collaborators worldwide.
Notes
Professor Richard Kenway is Vice-Principal High Performance Computing and Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy.
A full version of this obituary will be published in the spring edition of Bulletin magazine.