George Ernest Kalmus, CBE, FRS[1] (born 21 April 1935) is a noted British particle physicist.
After graduation, Kalmus continued at University College London, working on the design of a large bubble chamber which was built by the UCL group for the newly established National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science (NIRNS) – later to become the Rutherford Laboratory, and subsequently the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).
The University College London group's contribution was to design a 1.4m heavy liquid bubble chamber, as one of the suite of tools to be used at the NIRNS 7GeV proton synchrotron.
In 1962, Kalmus joined the Powell-Birge group at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LRL), initially working on a stopped K+ meson decay exposure in the 30 inch bubble chamber.
Apart from a brief return to University College London circa 1964, Kalmus remained at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory until 1971, participating in a systematic investigation of Kminus proton scattering in the resonance region.
Because RAL staff had no teaching responsibilities, they were more able to take on work within the collaborations that required longer periods at CERN or other overseas accelerators.
The idea being that the primary interaction would take place in the hydrogen, and the reaction products would then traverse the surrounding Neon-Hydrogen mixture and electrons would be easily identified.
However, the UK groups were centrally funded, and RAL with its relatively large engineering and design capabilities participated in all three activities when need arose.
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory also designed and constructed the large super conducting solenoid which surrounded the DELPHI detector.
In 1998, Kalmus took sabbatical leave from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and joined the NA48 Experiment at CERN whose prime purpose was to measure "direct" CP violation in Kzero decays.
Subsequent to his retirement, he joined the ZEPLIN 3 collaboration (RAL, Imperial College, Edinburgh, and Russian and Portuguese groups) searching for 'Dark Matter' particles, using a liquid xenon detector located in the Boulby Underground Laboratory in Yorkshire.
A listing of many of Kalmus' works can be found in 'INSPIRE' Particle Physics Database and the Science and Technology Facilities Council ePublication Archive.
Apart from his duties as Director of Particle Physics at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Kalmus has served on a number of international committees.