Thomas Appelquist

Thomas Appelquist is the Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of Physics. After receiving his PhD from Cornell University in 1968, he held postdoctoral appointments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Harvard University. He moved to Yale in January of 1976 and served as chair of the Physics Department from 1983 to 1989. He was director of the Division of Physical Sciences and Engineering from 1990 to 1993 and dean of the Graduate School from 1993 to 1998. He has been a leader of the Aspen Center for Physics in Aspen, Colorado, serving as president from 1993 to 1996 and chair of the Board from 2000 to 2006. 

Professor Appelquist is a theoretical physicist who has focused on sub-nuclear, elementary particle physics. Much of his work has stayed close to experiment, analyzing, and occasionally predicting new phenomena observed at the highest-energy particle accelerators. He has also long been fascinated by exotic possibilities, for example that there could be more than three spatial dimensions, with the extras wound so tightly that they have not yet been seen experimentally. He has received several awards for his work, including the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society.