Tigner studied physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute until 1958 and received a PhD degree from Cornell University in 1964.
After a stay at DESY, he led the development and construction of the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, which started operation in 1979.
[1] From 1994 to 2000 Tigner worked at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, contributing to the development of BEPC II.
[2] Tigner played a major role in the development of the Superconducting Super Collider, leading the Central Design Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory formed in 1984,[3] and worked on development of the International Linear Collider.
[6] He received the Robert R. Wilson Prize in 2000[7] and the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society in 2005.