Sir John Bertram Adams KBE FRS[1] (24 May 1920 – 3 March 1984)[2] was an English accelerator physicist and administrator.

In 1953, he moved once more to the new CERN Laboratory, serving in the General Physics Division as the engineer in charge of designing and building the Harwell Synchrocyclotron, Europe's first large accelerator[1] which operated successfully for 30 years until shutdown due to lack of funding.

As CERN's proton synchrotron became fully operational in 1959, Adams was important to defining the methods and organization by which physicists would conduct testing.

His work organizing CERN's administrative structure and measurement equipment were prepared for experimentation leading up until the synchrotron's start up at the end of 1959.

[4] He held this post until August 1961[5] when he returned to the UK as director of the Culham Fusion Laboratory, and then from 1966 to 1971 he was a member of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

[10] The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science (JAI), in the Denys Wilkinson Building, an accelerator physics research institute comprising researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, University of Oxford and Imperial College London is named in his honour.