John 'Jack' Connor is a British theoretical physicist whose research focussed on understanding the physics of nuclear fusion.
After studying for an undergraduate degree in Mathematical Physics at the University of Birmingham he gained a PhD in Elementary Particle Physics at the same university.[1]
In 1967 he began working at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire where he remained until he retired in 2007.[1] In 2004 he was awarded the Hannes Alfvén Prize alongside Jim Hastie and Bryan Taylor due to their wide contributions to the development of theories critical to magnetic confinement fusion.[2]
In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his contributions to the field, in particular for his work in the 1970s demonstrating that a plasma confined in a tokamak can produce its own current, termed the bootstrap current.[3] [4] This discovery is the basis of all modern tokamak reactors, including ITER.[5]