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Professor Antonella de Santo

Antonella De Santo, who heads the Sussex team that contributed to one of the biggest ever discoveries in physics, has become the first woman physicist to be made a professor at Sussex.

Professor De Santo, who is Head of Experimental Particle Physics, was responsible for setting up the Sussex group for the ATLAS experiment – part of the huge international science collaboration that last year discovered the Higgs boson, a particle whose existence underpins scientific understanding of how our Universe was formed and evolved – at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland.

Professor De Santo was educated in Italy and worked at CERN, the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London before coming to Sussex to develop the collaboration with CERN. 

“Working on the LHC and the discovery of the Higgs boson was a life-changing experience and I feel very privileged to be in a generation of physicists who have witnessed this change in what we know about nature and the Universe,” says Professor De Santo.

Around half of physics departments in UK universities still have no women professors, so is it isolating to be one of the few? Professor De Santo says: “It’s not always that easy to socialise with other women researchers, especially given that there are relatively few of them – it would be good to see more. But what matters in physics is your work, what you’re doing, not your gender, so I’m never isolated.”

Inspired herself by a female role model – the former head of ATLAS, Fabiola Gianotti – Professor De Santo is in turn looking to inspire the next generation of scientists and to encourage girls not to think of physics as a boys-only subject.

The public’s reaction to the ATLAS team’s Higgs boson stand at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition earlier this month was encouraging. “We had 7,000 visitors at our stand in a week – it was fantastic to see so much interest, especially from young people,” says Professor De Santo.

The University’s widening participation strategy already includes visits and events aimed at encouraging schoolchildren to look at science subjects and Professor De Santo is happy to be involved.

She says: “One teacher who heard I wanted to study physics said I’d be better off getting married and becoming a teacher. If I had listened to him I would never have had this wonderful experience. My advice to any young woman considering a physics degree, or a career in science would be – do not let anyone tell you that science is not for you. If that’s your dream, don’t ever let go of it.”

Professor Peter Coles, Head of the School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS), congratulated Professor De Santo on her professorship in his blog, where he commented on a reluctance among women scientists to put themselves forward for promotion.

He said: “I hope that recent successes in MPS, such as Antonella’s Professorship and Readerships for astronomer Kathy Romer and mathematician Vanessa Styles, will provide the necessary encouragement.”

In April, Sussex received the bronze award of the UK-wide Athena SWAN Charter for its commitment to improving the career prospects of women working in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects. The University is now continuing with its plans to achieve the silver award.