Don's History

Dr. Don Lincoln is a senior scientist doing research at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and former adjunct professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame.  Born in 1964, he received his Ph.D. from Rice University.  After postdoctoral appointments at the University of Michigan and Fermilab, he became a member of the Fermilab scientific staff in 1999.

His research has spanned many of the topics of modern particle physics, from better characterizing the known laws of physics, to looking for new and previously unknown phenomena.   He currently analyzes data gathered by the Large Hadron Collider. 

He has coauthored over 1,700 scientific papers and supervised many students.  His noteworthy scientific accomplishments involve being a co-discoverer of the top quark and the Higgs boson.  He has written several books for non-scientists about particle physics. He has made many science videos for the Fermilab YouTube channel and three long video classes with the Great Courses Company. He has also written for many popular science outlets, including CNN, Big Think, Scientific American, the NOVA website, and LiveScience.
 

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was the recipient of the 2013 Outreach Prize from the European Physical Society and the 2017 Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics for his efforts in communicating science to the public.  In 2024, he received the Klopsteg Memorial Lectureship from the American Association of Physics Teachers and the Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach from the American Physical Society.