1978 Ph.D, SUNY, Stony Brook
1978-80 Research Associate, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California
1980-84 Senior Guest Scientist, GSI - Darmstadt (Germany)
1984-89 Divisional Fellow, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California
1989-96 Sr. Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California
1982 Visiting Scientist- University of Heidelberg (Germany)
1986 Visiting Scientist- CERN-Geneva, Switzerland
1986-87 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow, University of Frankfurt and
CERN
1993 Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Achievement Award
1995-96 Senior U.S. Humboldt Prize, University of Frankfurt and CERN
1996- Professor of Physics, Yale University
Research Interests
The research interests of John Harris are focused on understanding the behavior of nuclear, hadronic and partonic matter at high energy densities. Quantum Chromodynamics lattice calculations predict that a transition from normal nuclear or hadronic matter to a deconfined phase of matter consisting of freely interacting quarks and gluons, known as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), will occur at extremely high energy densities above approximately 2 GeV/fm3. Such energy densities are expected to be created in collisions of heavy nuclei at ultrarelativistic energies. Formation and discovery of the QGP is the primary purpose of the ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus experiments at the CERN Super-Proton Synchrotron (SPS) complex, experiments at the new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven Laboratory in the U.S., and at the future Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
John Harris was involved in the original proposal to initiate a nucleus-nucleus experimental program at CERN to search for a possible QGP phase transition, and has been an active member in the planning, conceptual design, construction, data aquisition and physics of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus experiments NA35 and NA49 at the CERN SPS. He has been spokesperson for the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) experiment since its inception in 1991. STAR is one of the two large experiments being constructed at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It will commence data acquisition for physics in 2000, to search for the QGP and to pursue a better understanding of the behavior of nuclear, hadronic and partonic matter at high energy densities.