SIMON HANDS

I am a theoretical and computational physicist with 30+ years of research experience in particle, nuclear and condensed matter physics. I left my native Liverpool in 1980 to study at first Cambridge, then Edinburgh Universities, and subsequently held research positions at Oxford, Illinois, Glasgow and CERN. I was appointed as a PPARC Advanced Fellow in the newly-formed particle theory group in the Department of Physics at Swansea University in 1993, where I held a PPARC Senior Research Fellowship for the period 2003-05. In 2021 I joined the Fundamental Particle Physics cluster in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Liverpool.

My research uses lattice field theory to study microscopic properties of matter (find some old postgrad lecture notes here); in particular the quark-gluon plasma thought to exist for temperatures in excess of a trillion degrees, and currently the object of scrutiny at heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and LHC; and the ultra-dense quark matter possibly to be found in the cores of neutron stars. An introduction to the field suitable for final-year physics undergraduates can be found here, and an allegorical graphic novel starring superheroes Thor, Sif and Loki, exploring the concepts from an unexpected direction, and which I helped translate into English, here.

Recently I have become interested in graphene, a remarkable state of carbon formed of a honeycomb sheet only one atom thick, and a great stimulus for exploring quantum field theory in 2+1 dimensions.. For academic year 2015/16 I was a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, with a project called Numerical tools for critical physics in 3d theories of fermions. For the curious, watch a recent talk at the Theoretical Physics Colloquium hosted by Arizona State University.

image credit Sane Seven

I have been been involved with DiRAC, STFC's distributed high performance computing facility supporting theoretical activity in astronomy, cosmology, nuclear and particle physics since its inception, and until recently was co-chair of the Project Board. In 2021 I became DiRAC's first Community Development Director.

From 2008-12 I served on the Scientific Board of the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas ECT* located in Trento in northern Italy. In 2006 I also coordinated a Doctoral Training Programme there (click here for a picture). For 2009-2017 I served on STFC's Particle Physics Grants Panel.

I was Principal Organiser of the programme Strong Fields, Integrability and Strings held at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge in the second half of 2007 (click here for a picture).

In 2024 I chaired the Local Organising Committee of the Lattice 2024 conference which attracted approximately 500 delegates from around the world.

I have been a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Extreme QCD conference series, and the editorial board of the European Physical Journal A, in 2013 co-editing with Hartmut Wittig a topical issue on Lattice Field Theory Methods in Hadron and Nuclear Physics. Together with Simon Catterall I guest-edited a special issue of Symmetry on New Applications of Symmetry in Lattice Field Theory. In 2021 I was recognised by the American Physical Society as an Outstanding Referee for my work on behalf of Physical Review.

With my friend Jonathan Allday I co-authored an informal textbook Introduction to Entropy: The Way of the World , published in October 2024.

In 1993 I was one of five winners of a bottle of vintage champagne offered by the then UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, for the best description on one side of an A4 page of the Higgs Boson and why we should try so hard to find it.

I am married to artist Sally Hands (click here for a physics-related picture made long ago and far away) and we have one son.
crazy wiggles
Sally weaves rugs, and I recently wrote a python script to simulate her loom -- producing balanced and weft-faced patterns in either straight or broken twill.
I'm happy to share the details if you're interested.

I enjoy hands , and hands
and suffer from a lifelong attachment to .

I am a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and a member of the a cappella vocal group The Accidentals. hands

You can find a list of my publications on the INSPIRES database, and also on Google Scholar, ORCID, ResearchGate, or Publons.
Alternatively check out my academic lineage here, or see how connected I am at LinkedIn.

Want to take me away from all this? Click here for a recent CV.