"The most important insight I have gleaned about the process of researching into the fundamental nature of matter, is best described by Einstein's famous quote: 'Imagination is more important than knowledge,'" said Pinfold A distinguished professor and internationally renowned particle physicist, Pinfold has been awarded a Killam Prize for making a substantial and significant contribution to the natural sciences.
His quest to discover fundamental truths about our universe has been lifelong.
As a graduate student at University College London in 1972, Pinfold was a leader in CERN's discovery of the neutral current, the first hard evidence for Electroweak Unification.
Since then, he became a founding member in 1992 of the ATLAS Experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that in 2012 announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. In 1997, he became the youngest ever leader of an international collider experiment.
He is currently a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and leads the LHC's newest experiment, MoEDAL, focusing his efforts on searching for new physics at the high-energy frontier and-on the cosmic frontier-searching for remnants from the birth of the universe.
The Killam Prize celebrates Canadian researchers, scientists, doctors, and scholars for their contribution and research in industry, government agencies, and universities. Winners are selected by a committee of their peers and are awarded the Killam Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts. Honorees have spent their lifetime working towards researching and improving the quality of life of individuals across the globe, and are awarded for their significant contributions to their respective fields in the humanities, health sciences, engineering, natural sciences, or social sciences.