Credit: J. LIEBECK

Believing in things of a size most people can't imagine is part of a physicist's everyday life. In his work towards the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC), Brian Foster has gone from subatomic quarks and leptons to the largest linear collider ever built. (See CV)

For Foster, this is the biggest step in a career that has seen him building new equipment to take discovery further and influencing the direction of physics by advising the UK government. The ILC will be about 40 kilometres long, able to smash electrons together at 500 billion electronvolts in its search for new dimensions of space and forces of nature, and is likely to cost several billion dollars.

Foster's new role extends beyond building the machinery to constructing support for it. Some people, especially outside the particle-physics community, see the project as too big to build and too expensive to pay for. “I expect to spend a lot of time on outreach, both to fellow scientists and to the general public,” he says.

Although the focus of his research has remained steady for more than 25 years, Foster has been open to change when necessary. After gaining his DPhil from Oxford, he spent nearly 20 years in the physics department at the University of Bristol, where he is now professor emeritus. Then, in his late 40s, he became chairman of the European Committee for Future Accelerators and soon afterwards took “the obvious next step” back to Oxford.

“Never get depressed when you think that your career isn't developing or advancing,” he advises. “This happened to me several times. What is actually happening is that the pressure is gradually building up, more and more people are noticing you, there will be a sudden 'dam-break' and your career will move to another level.”

He is always learning from colleagues: veteran physicist George Kalmus, for example, a colleague on many Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council committees, taught him “how to keep calm and extract the best from what seemed like awful dilemmas”.

He is learning from interests outside science, too — touring the globe with his violin teacher Jack Liebeck, giving a World Year of Physics lecture that celebrates Einstein (another passionate violinist) through a mixture of music and science. “Playing the violin seriously again has shown me that you are never too old to get better at something, if you want it badly enough, are lucky enough to find a superb teacher and can put in the work,” he says.