Residence Australia Role Physicist Nationality Australian Fields Physicist | Notable awards Fulbright Program Name Rod Crewther Influenced by Richard Feynman | |
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Institutions University of Adelaide
CERN
Cornell University
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
University of Berne
University of Dortmund
Max Planck Institute Alma mater California Institute of Technology
Melbourne University Notable students Adrian P. Flitney,Bao-Loc Nguyen Education California Institute of Technology, University of Melbourne Similar People Murray Gell‑Mann, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Sin‑Itiro Tomonaga | ||
Doctoral advisor Murray Gell-Mann | ||
Rod crewther playing piano before a lecture
Rodney James Crewther (born 1945) is a physicist, notable in the field of gauge field theories.
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Education
After gaining his MSc at Melbourne University, Crewther was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. He studied under the tutelage of Nobel prizewinner Murray Gell-Mann and completed his doctorate, in 1971, after successfully defending his dissertation against the renowned theorist Richard Feynman. His thesis was entitled Spontaneous Breakdown of Conformal and Chiral Invariance.
Career
After his PhD, he held postdoctoral appointments at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. Subsequently, he spent twelve years in Europe, six of them as a Staff Member of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, and the remainder as a Research Associate at the University of Berne, University of Dortmund, and at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. Crewther was then appointed as a senior lecturer in physics at the University of Adelaide.
Having a keen interest in politics, Crewther is vice-president of the University of Adelaide branch of the National Tertiary Education Union. He also served on the University Council.
Teaching
He designed the honours physics course "Gauge Field Theories." He also lectures on Quantum Mechanics III, Advanced Dynamics and Relativity, and Honours Quantum Field Theory. Although he no longer teaches the courses Quantum Mechanics II, Honours Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics, and Classical Fields and Mathematical Methods, his notes are followed by his successors.
Dr Crewther also teaches a 4-week module of Physics 1B at the University of Adelaide where he hosts mechanics lectures that focus on the centre of mass, rotation, angular momentum and gyroscopic precession.